Over the last several years, backyard ultras have exploded in popularity.

The concept—originated in 2011 by Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, best known as co-founder and race director of the separate Barkley Marathons—features competitors running one 4.167-mile lap on the hour every hour until one person remains, the 4.167-mile loop allowing runners to complete 100 miles if they make it to 24 hours. Typically, the race is held in a large ranch or backyard, hence the name. But last year Austin Lo and Victor Zeitoune decided to introduce the format to New York City, with a twist: runners would pay no entry fee and simply add a $1 bill to a jar for each lap they attempt, with the winner bringing home the entire pot.

In the end, 57 people showed up to the start line of last July’s inaugural $1 ultra on the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan, with Kieran Calderwood earning the ultimate trophy of $397 after running 25 laps down to South Ferry and back, or 104 miles over 25 hours. This Saturday at 6 a.m. EST, the $1 ultra makes its return, this time with roughly 200 expected starters and a few new elements of mayhem.

Each lap will begin and end at Printers Alley, a midtown sports bar just south of Times Square. This year’s race will have no exact course—instead, runners have to navigate on their own to and from one or more checkpoints during each lap, the shortest possible route totaling 4.167 miles. The initial checkpoint(s) won’t be announced until 30 minutes prior to the start of the race, and could potentially change during the race as well. All the while participants will have to traverse through unclosed streets during opening weekend of the World Cup as well as Game 5 of the NBA Finals, with the Knicks looking to clinch their first NBA Championship in 53 years.

In terms of preparing for the logistical challenges, Justin Kunz—who’s returning to the race after completing 18 laps (74 miles) last year—says there’s only one thing you can do: “expect chaos.”

“That’s just the core and the crux of ultra-marathoning, is you just figure it out,” added Charlotte Werner, who volunteered at last year’s $1 ultra and is doing so again this year. “That’s sort of like the layout of the race as a whole, and I think that makes it special.”

Origins

The idea for the $1 ultra started out mostly as a joke.

Last spring, Lo and Zeitoune were following the social media coverage of the BPN Last Man Standing Ultra in Texas, one of the latest iterations of a growing list of backyard ultras across the globe. The pair met running unsanctioned races in New York, have grown closer over the last few years while diving deeper into the ultramarathon space and started searching for backyard ultras in New York City—to no avail. As they followed the BPN race, that quickly turned into, “What if we just organized one?” and eventually a dinner of spitballing ideas at Teddy’s Bar & Grill in Williamsburg.

There, they scribbled “$1 backyard ultra, July 26, New York City” on a napkin, posted it to a new Instagram account titled @onedollarultra and never looked back.

“The $1 ultra started off as a silly idea,” Lo said. “But in my mind and Vic’s mind, it’s kind of our thank you to the New York running community, and a way to spread the joy or spread the passion of ultra-endurance events to a broader audience.”

The two kept posting additional details on their new Instagram page as it got closer to race day, expecting five or 10 of their friends to participate. They were surprised to see the turnout the morning of, and even more surprised at the reaction in the following days. Videos from the event started blowing up on social media, with the one of Calderwood beginning his final lap reaching 1.4 million views. Lo and Zeitoune hadn’t given much thought to future renditions of the race, but after DMs started pouring in from those asking if they could join the next year, they didn’t really have a choice.

“That was when we were like, ‘Wait, hold on, we’ve created something special. We’ve created something that people want to be a part of,’” Lo said. “I mean, when you look at who ran last year, a fair amount of the field set their distance PRs, people broke the marathon distance for the first time…. And we’re like, ‘Okay, this is something cool, this is something unique.’

“And when the amount of interest started pouring in immediately for a second iteration of it, we’re like, ‘All right, well, I guess we’re doing it, we can’t waste it.’ So here we are.”

‘We can’t just keep this to ourselves’

Like many others, Lo started running consistently over the pandemic, completing his first marathon at the 2021 NYC Marathon and his second in 2022 in Berlin. Ultra-endurance events weren’t on his mind just yet, but when he crossed the finish line in Berlin he realized he had more left in the tank.

“I remember crossing the finish line and thinking, ‘Oh man, this ended just as it was getting good. I was just hitting the flow,’” Lo said. “So that’s part of where this idea of, ‘Wait, hold on, I could go beyond a marathon,’ started.”

Lo ran the OSR30 the following spring as his first ultra-marathon, however his first true ultra-endurance test—what he calls beyond a 50k—came when a friend signed up for the 2024 Black Canyon 100k and convinced him to join.

“I remember crossing the finish line of that, and just feeling this, like, ‘Oh my god, nothing can hurt me. I’ve broken through this thing that I thought was impossible,’” Lo said. “And that feeling, I described it as afterglow. It carried on for months, and it kind of became like a drug.”

Zeitoune’s undergone a similar transformation within his running journey.

He got into running after graduating college in 2018 and spent his first several years in the sport chasing PRs on the clock. In 2024 he ran The Speed Project in memory of his friend Sam Norton, and upon completing the ~340-mile relay from Los Angeles to Las Vegas decided that he wanted to return the following April to race it again—except this time, solo.

Lo remembers Zeitoune telling him before the trek that it would be a one-and-done endeavor, before watching the latter experience the same “afterglow” feeling he’d warned him about. Seven months later Zeitoune won The Speed Project Atacama solo, a ~334-mile journey through the Atacama Desert in Chile, with Lo helping crew Zeitoune during both solo runs.

“The feeling emotionally and mentally that you get from conquering something that you don’t think was possible, that’s a drug,” Lo said. “That’s a really powerful drug, in a good way, in that it allows you to carry yourself through life where everything just rolls off of you. Everything can go wrong, and your world can be turned completely upside down, and you hold on to this little feeling of, ‘Well, I’ve felt a lot worse, and I’ve made it through before’....

“Sharing that is also part of why Vic and I started the $1 ultra. Breaking through the barrier of perceived limitation can be so powerful and so uplifting that it’s something we had to share. It’s something we want to share. It’s something that we were like, ‘Hey, we can’t just keep this to ourselves.’”

‘Community-focused’

Another inspiration for the $1 ultra was what Lo sees as an increasing corporatization of the sport, and races in particular.

He and Zeitoune, who each run their own separate startups in New York, had no intention of making money off the $1 ultra and actually lost a fair amount organizing the race last year. But it was that lack of monetary motivation that allowed them to play around with the structure in such unique ways—including the $1 feature itself, which Lo says was influenced by his time playing cards and fascination for parimutuel betting (where the pot grows as more players play).

The format not only creates an entry point into ultramarathons far cheaper and more accessible than most alternatives, but it also establishes a grassroots nature that further attracts runners seeking an escape from the commercialized running world.

“I just loved how community-focused the entire event was,” Kunz said. “It wasn’t put on by a brand or by really any of the organized infrastructures within the running world. I loved how it was just a bunch of people getting together to do something really hard on the West Side Highway.”

This year, Lo and Zeitoune decided to really put their creative race director chops to the test.

It began with the registration process. They received far more demand for entries than they could reasonably handle while keeping that desired grassroots character, and so they created a questionnaire for prospective applicants. Just over 200 racers were accepted, but nobody was outright rejected. Instead the remaining applicants were waitlisted, and given a simple option to get off the waitlist: complete a custom-built game where they had to press a button once an hour for 24 hours, a virtual backyard ultra. Six people completed the game to get into the race.

Then there’s the location. The Parks Department repeatedly threatened to shut down the event last year due to the Hudson River Park officially closing at 1 a.m., so Lo and Zeitoune knew they needed to find an alternate race HQ this time around. Naturally, they decided on Times Square. While the Knicks have now added some complications to that choice, it still had its own rationale from the beginning.

“Part of the original piece of this was New York City’s our backyard,” Lo said. “There are no traditional backyards. The city is our backyard…. As New Yorkers, if running is your passion, you run through the streets.”

Similar to last year Lo and Zeitoune will be awarding various lap prizes throughout the race, and are also introducing a variety of other additions to the overall experience—including a website with live GPS tracking, livestreams at Printers Alley as well as an app where racers can upload photos and videos while on course and spectators can leave voice notes for racers. It’s certainly a lot to oversee for a pair of new race organizers, but to some extent the whole essence of the $1 ultra is putting things out into the world and seeing what works.

“We all understand it’s unsanctioned…. And that’s the beauty of it too, is that I don’t think there’s any real expectation, other than a community of people who really want to run and see how far they can go,” Werner said.

That’s the spirit that brought Calderwood to the West Side Highway last year. He says he had no goals of winning the race, and just wanted to have “a time” with his friends and “to go until the wheels absolutely fell off, and then maybe roll some more.” Calderwood actually recalls being disappointed when the remainder of the podium, Lindsey Nelson and Sophie Szew, dropped after 24 laps and 100 miles—he called the day an “adventure,” and didn’t want to see it come to an end.

He adds that he’s yet to use his winnings, and hopes that doesn’t change anytime soon.

“The jar is a trophy. I have not opened it. I have not counted the money. If I ever open that jar to get money out of it, it’ll mean I am in the worst, most down bad spot imaginable,” Calderwood said. “That thing I hope is never going to be opened, is something that my great-grandkids will have, and they better not open it either.

“I have no idea how much money’s in it. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It is a great reminder of the adversity of the day, of the adventure that that was, and the friendships that were made.”

Pushing to the brink

To truly compete in a race of this format, one has to approach it with a certain type of ethos. To Calderwood, that wasn’t just with the intent of enjoying time with friends, but also a deeper interest in what a race like this can bring out of you.

“I’m fascinated by what real long-distance endurance does to the human mind and the human body, the human spirit,” Calderwood said. “And I was really curious to see what it would look like if my wheels fell off, what that would take…. None of us really go there ever. So I thought, ‘Man, if I could just do it once, that would be a blessing.’”

Calderwood has also seen the backyard format referred to as a “tango,” where having partners out there pushing you along is a necessity to finding your true limits. He’s unable to defend his crown this year due to a friend’s wedding, but lucky for those that are competing, there should be no shortage of people to run with.

Two of the newcomers expected to take this year’s race deep are Joe DeAngelo and Roland Mann. The duo became quite familiar with one another during January’s New York City Burrito League, a competition that awarded a year’s worth of free burritos to whoever ran the most laps of a 0.3-mile segment in Central Park over the course of 23 days. DeAngelo took home first place with 2,254 laps—over 29 miles per day—with Mann not far behind at 2,040.

Mann also took second place at last year’s New York City Chipotle Challenge (a similar contest to and what eventually inspired Burrito League), making him even more eager to come out on top this weekend.

“I’ll be honest, my goal is to win,” Mann said. “Whatever it takes until either I win or they have to physically remove me from the course.”

Mann isn’t the only one with that never-give-in attitude. Kunz says one of his only regrets from last year is not at least attempting an 19th lap, later coming across a popularized phrase in the backyard ultra space that has since stuck with him: “never die in the chair.” It’s a saying that Tom Garvey, a retired professional triathlete and another newcomer to the $1 ultra, is familiar with as well.

Garvey says his favorite part of any endurance event is the final third, that moment where you either commit to the pain or back off. He adds that he has no distance goals for this weekend, and has never really had any athletic goals he ever viewed as an “end point,” something he believes translates well to a race like this.

“I’m not seeing an end,” Garvey said. “I’m not going to be happy when I get to 100k, 100 miles, 150…. It’s going to be about how I feel at the end of the race, and if I feel completely and utterly wiped out, like I couldn’t go another step.”

Nelson enters as the top returner, hoping to exceed her 24-lap (100-mile) performance from 2025. But she also simply appreciates how the race provides the chance to see how long you can suffer for, a different type of mental challenge from the faster races she’s more accustomed to.

Meanwhile, Annemarie Shoemaker heads into her $1 ultra debut from almost purely an ultra-marathon background. She says she has a “weird confidence” about the race, even having never participated in a backyard ultra specifically, partially because of a fighter mentality she feels is suited to the last one standing style. However she adds that she’s also gathered inspiration from Rachel Entrekin’s recent win and course record at the Cocodona 250, a landmark performance that further cemented the ability for women to compete outright in the ultra-endurance world.

“Especially me as a woman, I hope that I can go far,” Shoemaker said. “Running with my friends, and people that are fast and good male runners, I noticed recently that I can often out-run them. And that’s kind of exciting.”

‘One of my favorite races I’ve ever done or seen’

Nobody’s quite sure how long this year’s $1 ultra will last.

Lo knows of at least three people who have taken Monday off from work, which he calls “a little concerning,” and DeAngelo says he expects it to go quite a bit longer than 100 miles just “based on the respect that I have for the other competitors in the field.” Werner’s official prediction is 40 hours (166 miles), which would take the event into late Sunday night.

Of course, there are many factors that can come into play to shorten a backyard ultra, from injuries to heat exhaustion to fueling and pacing strategy. And that’s not even taking into account the physical impact of cement and asphalt as well as the mental fatigue caused by the location and surrounding events this weekend.

But that uncertainty is what defines an ultra-marathon, a backyard ultra and especially the $1 ultra. The only guarantee is that at some point in the future one person will be the last one standing—the journey to get to there is to be determined, and also the entire point.

“A big focus was suffer well, just suffer well,” Calderwood said of his experience last year. “The mind constantly goes to the pain that you’re feeling after 40, 50, 60 miles. But if you’re trying to suffer well, that just flips the coin on its head. The whole game gets transformed into a good thing, like the farther you go, the more pain, the better. And letting that be not just purposeless, but completely purposeful. Every step teaching you something, teaching me something—I learned so much about myself, about my friends, about pain, about adventure.

“And that’s what, to me, a real adventure is, is taking something on regardless of the outcome, having no idea what will happen next…. The goal on the day for me, and anyone I was with, was just surprise yourself, do something new, do something you’ve never done before. And I got to do that…. It’s probably one of my favorite races I’ve ever done or seen.”

-By Evan Kolin

Emily Erdos says she got into running for all the wrong reasons.

“Honestly, my goal was to lose weight,” she says. “If I’m being super candid, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, running a marathon will make me skinny.’”

Eventually Emily realized those goals needed to change if she wanted to stay healthy, get faster and keep running for years to come. Along the way she’s run five World Marathon Majors, started chasing times she ‘never thought I would be even touching’ and found community through Brooklyn Track Club and the Bandit Program.

It was pacing with Bandit that influenced her to start coaching herself, using her running origin story and injury history to help others avoid those same mistakes. Emily’s years of competitive rowing experience through high school and college certainly helped as well, where her whole job as a coxswain was to push and motivate those around her to accomplish a common objective.

We spoke with Emily to discuss how her rowing background has helped both her coaching and individual running journey, the importance of detaching from the data as an athlete, her experience running the 2023 NYC Marathon in honor of her dad and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to just give an intro of where you’re from originally and then how you got into running?

Yeah, totally. So I was born in Connecticut, went to high school in Massachusetts. I would run casually, I didn’t do track or anything in high school. I was on the rowing team throughout high school, and also in college. I was a coxswain, so it’s like the little person in the back of the boat who steers and kind of yells at everybody and tells them what to do. So I was always around high-level athletics, but never really running.

And then moved to New York after the pandemic…. Picked up running because it was free and it was a good form of exercise. I lived near the park. I had actually run my first marathon in college, and then dropped it for a while, but got back into running when I moved to New York. And then signed up for a marathon, as one does, kind of not knowing what I was getting into. And then just really got the bug, and have been running ever since.

What motivated that [initial marathon in college], or what was the backstory behind that experience?

It was this crazy friend I had—and it’s funny, she’s one of my athletes that I work with now, she’s one of my best friends. She wanted to run a marathon, and was like, ‘Do it with me.’ And we signed up for this marathon called the ½ Sauer ½ Kraut, and it was in June, it was four laps around a park in Philadelphia, which in June it was like 85 degrees and 90 percent humidity, it was horrible. And we didn’t really train at all, I maybe did like one 20-mile long run, but I had no idea what I was doing….

It was crazy because it was German-themed, so the prize was like a little German house, and throughout they had bagpipes along the way, and they had frankfurters as the fuel, so it was kind of an insane race. And then I was like, ‘Wow, I’m never doing that again.’ So that was in 2016 maybe, and then I didn’t run another marathon again until 2022.

You mentioned your rowing background…. How did that experience prepare you for your running journey now as well?

I mean, I think it makes you a competitor, right? You know how to compete. The rush of getting to a start line at a marathon, I hadn’t had that experience since I was at the start line of a rowing race. And I was like, ‘Wow, I missed this,’ that adrenaline rush of being on the line and getting ready to do something that maybe seems impossible, or that you’re not sure if you can 100 percent do—it’s fun, and it’s so thrilling, and it was something that I hadn’t had for a while I think.

Rowing for a decade, you learn how to race, and race smart, right? So just knowing that the race isn’t over till it’s over, there are crazy comeback stories, you learn to be patient throughout a race. I think as much as running is not a team sport, it also is a team sport. So learning to learn and grow from other people—and I think that’s the beauty of run clubs, running with people, training is always better with people. And I mean, I will say it shaped a lot of my coaching practice around just seeing female athletes interacting with each other, and also around fueling and eating and weight, that shaped a ton of my running experience today.

But I think at the very heart of it, having goals outside of either work or school or life and something that’s just for you, I had really missed that, of having something that you come together with either a team or friends or just for yourself.

You’re a part of Brooklyn Track Club—how did you find that community, and how did that aid in your running journey?

So it was after my first marathon, somebody was like, ‘Oh, you should come to this,’ and it totally changed my relationship with running. It definitely got at that team aspect that I had been missing from rowing. I had kind of been a solo runner before, and now I can’t imagine going a week without running with friends. Met so many close friends, and also just you push yourself harder, when you’re running next to someone. And I was so intimidated, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I should be in a track club, I’m not that fast, I’m not that good, never ran track in college.’ But everybody was so welcoming.

And then from Brooklyn Track Club, I ended up pacing for the Bandit Program. I was originally an athlete for them when it was really small, it was like 30 people, and then ended up becoming a pacer for them—which is how I discovered I really wanted to coach, because I really enjoyed pacing so much. So that was great too, having a consistent schedule, same with Brooklyn Track Club. Every week you come back, you see the same people, you start to see improvement together. There’s something about that level of vulnerability where you’re really hurting next to someone that I think bonds people in a way that’s pretty different from just going and getting a coffee.

I’m curious if you can talk through that experience of, I guess it was your second marathon technically, but first one where you’d been running consistently—how did it compare to your expectations and how did it convince you to keep running consistently in the months and years that followed?

Yeah, I mean, you just get the bug, don’t you? Like, you just can’t stop. So I ran the Brooklyn Marathon [in 2022], that was my first—I say it was my first, but technically second…. And I took I think one gel, which was just horrifying, and had no idea what I was doing. And then I immediately knew I wanted to do another one, and I was pretty sure I wanted to do New York to do a bigger one, mostly because I did better than I’d expected to, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not so bad at this, I should keep going.’

I was supposed to do New York in ‘22 as well…and I ended up getting injured right before it, largely from underfueling. And I pulled out, I deferred to the next year, so then that next year I did Berlin and New York. And those two—I think there’s something about doing your first Major, where you’re like, ‘Wow, this is really different and really special,’ and then you kind of start to want to keep running them.

What were the initial goals going into running marathons, and how have they evolved since as you’ve gotten deeper and deeper into the sport over the last couple years as well?

I mean my first one, honestly, my goal was to lose weight. If I’m being super candid, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, running a marathon will make me skinny, I’ll be running all the time,’ which of course was part of a larger eating disorder. That was my first goal. I had no idea what time I would do. I did maybe right under 3:30….

And then yeah, I was chasing times, right? So I was much more interested in getting faster, and I think through that I realized, ‘Okay, the only way to get faster without getting injured—which I did in the interim—is to fuel properly and take this seriously, fuel and sleep, and do the training, and don’t overtrain, and kind of get smarter about all of it.’ And then since then, I’m definitely still chasing time goals, and it’s crazy how they change. I’m now chasing goals that I never thought I would be even touching, like your whole frame of reference shifts about, ‘Oh, this is achievable for me.’

But also, there’s a lot of it now too, especially with coaching, where I want to have a lot of fun in races. And I’m challenging myself in different kinds of mindsets, doing some shorter races, not even marathons, and finding different challenges depending on the season. So I think, yes of course there’s always a time goal there, but also different life experiences, longevity in running, saying, ‘Okay, I’d actually really like to run for the rest of my life and not get injured.’ So the goals have definitely shifted in that way.

You’ve done a lot of the Majors so far, if you want to touch on which you have left…. And also which of the ones that you’ve done is your favorite course, favorite experience, etc.?

Yeah, I’ve done five. I have London left, although they keep making the denominator bigger. And I’m hopefully going to do London next year via charity.

New York far and away is the best one, no question about it. There’s something about a home game, right?.... All your best friends are out there, it’s such a party. It’s just like the best of humanity, I can’t even—doesn’t even come close.

You touched on it briefly earlier, but if you want to expand on what motivated you to get into coaching initially, and how would you describe your coaching philosophy at a high level?

Yeah, totally. So I was pacing for the Bandit Program, and felt like I had a lot to give the athletes, just in terms of a lot of years of athletic experience, and how to mentally think about approaching—my whole job as a coxswain was to get people to go harder at the time when they were in so much pain and did not want to go any harder, and give them the information that they needed to do that, and then to win, essentially. It was like motivating people, that was my whole job. So I found that I had a lot that I could give there to the athletes who were starting out on their first marathon, or even their third marathon and looking for a different time goal. And I also felt so strongly about nutrition, and I saw so many women, women and men just like me, who were getting into running for all the wrong reasons, and obsessed with the data, and the splits, and the calorie tracking, and all of it.

And I just felt like I had gone through this whole—years of having an eating disorder, but also then getting obsessed with the numbers, doing it for all the wrong reasons. And I had gone through a journey where I felt like I’d come out of the other side of that focused on feel and effort and doing the right things to get faster. So I felt really strongly that I wanted to help other people with that, and hopefully they can shortcut and skip the whole injury journey, and all of it that I went through. And so got certified as a run coach and a nutrition coach about a year and a half ago.

And in terms of philosophy, I think it’s two things. I think one is flexibility…. Everybody I coach has very busy lives, they all have jobs, some have kids. I coach a woman whose husband has ALS, I coach a couple people who’re in school, so just very busy demands on life. And I think something about flexibility—like we’re not pro runners, go on your vacation, move things around, text me if you don’t feel good. Let’s be flexible and get the best out of you, which I think can be hard with a rote plan of just, ‘All right, run these miles on these days.’ So flexibility is a really big philosophy for me.

And then yeah, fueling, and letting go of the data a little bit, and really being able to nourish your body both with food, but also strength training and sleep, and just tuning into what your body is telling you. Ignore what your Coros or your Garmin or your Oura Ring, whatever you have says for a minute—how are you feeling? Are you hungry? Do you feel like you could be fueled more? Those kinds of things are what I’m really focused on with most of my athletes.

In what ways has coaching and working with athletes changed your own relationship with running, or just your own running journey in general?

Totally. I will say everybody should have a coach, even coaches. So I have a coach, I work with Kara Dudley, and she’s amazing, love her, would recommend her to anyone. Because there are still things that you can say to other people as much as you want, but it’s hard to get through your own head. And that’s why even all the pros, who presumably know so much about running, have coaches.

But yeah, absolutely, I think seeing different athlete experiences…it just kind of opens up your world of, ‘Wow, there are different ways to approach this, or that person had a really good attitude about this hard workout that I gave them, and I had a hard workout last week and I had such a negative attitude, like, why is that?’ But mostly I just love seeing people surprise themselves and be like, ‘Wow, I didn’t think I could do that.’ And I think that changes my relationship to be like, ‘Wait, I could do that too. I could push beyond what I think I’m capable of.’ I believe in them so much, it’s like, ‘Oh, you should believe in yourself the same amount.’

You did Southbound 400 [last year]—what motivated you to do that, or if you just want to talk about that experience in general?

Yeah, oh my god, talk about pushing past every limit you thought you ever had. It was definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I got asked to be on a team, and I was like, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’ I didn’t quite know what I was getting into. I think all of the relays are really unique. That’s the only one I’ve ever done, but I had a couple athletes do The Speed Project, which is so different because you don’t sleep, so you start to hallucinate a little bit, whereas Southbound you end the day and you sleep, how civilized, and you get a tent, how civilized.

It really just brought me back to my rowing roots, because it was eight people—in the boats I coxed it was eight people—and you have a crew around you, and you really go through highs and lows. There were points where people on the team were fighting, and it’s such a strategy course too, you have to plan out all the routes. So there were definitely low points of, ‘Wow, we missed a turn,’ or, ‘This feels like it’s going on forever,’ or it’s pouring rain, or it’s really hot. We had it all out there.

But at the end of the day, it’s like that primal competitiveness too, where chasing the other teams down is so fun, and you don’t get that a lot in running. It tends to be more individualized. So to have it be kind of a team sport, it really felt like one of the closest experiences to rowing that I could imagine.

What life lessons have you gotten from running, or ways that running has helped in other areas of your life as well?

Oh man, I mean so many. Patience, for sure. Especially with marathoning—even with shorter races too—it’s a long race, you know? If you have one bad mile, you can make it up. And a lot of the times, it’s like, you have one bad day, you can probably make it up in the rest of the week. Life’s long, running races are long.

And then I think, god, so many friends, so many unbelievable friends just of other people who run, or who talk about running. And at work there’s a run club that we have at the Times that has some little competitions, and some of my closest friends at work I’ve bonded with over running. So I think just meeting new people, and I guess that’s like any hobby, but I do feel like runners are a special breed of kind of nerding out on all things running.

Any favorite running or race memories that you’d like to touch on that stand out?

So in ‘22 when I was supposed to run New York—my dad passed away in August of ‘22, and that was another big factor. I had been planning to run the marathon, but kind of was not super attached to it in any way. But then decided to fundraise, when he got sick, with City Harvest. My dad grew up in Brooklyn and was a long-time New York Yankees fan, big New York guy. And so I raised money for City Harvest, which is obviously a New York-based foundation.

And I didn’t run it in ‘22, which was pretty devastating. But then the redemption of coming back for ‘23 and running it in honor of him, and running through Brooklyn, his old neighborhood, that was really special for me. And I know a lot of people run in honor of people, so I think that’s such a beautiful thing.

Dante Pilkington fell in love with running in high school on the streets of Red Hook.

The Brooklyn native would run out to Valentino Pier and back, catching a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty midway through. He remembers a ‘freeness’ to it, as compared to his time wrestling prior to that, and that there was something ‘soulful’ about that quiet and desolate area growing up.

Dante’s been on-and-off with the sport since then, running three weeks of Division III before quitting because he ‘just couldn’t get down with the 90-pound mean nerds that really good runners are a lot of the time in college.’ He eventually trained to beat one of those former teammates in a half marathon out of spite during his senior year, setting a PR that would remain until last spring.

Along the way, Dante picked up marathoning, joined North Brooklyn Runners, joined the board of North Brooklyn Runners, qualified for Boston and PR’d at Boston. But now, he says ‘I’m not trying to get back to these PRs, I’m always trying to get back to that Red Hook run when I was 16.’

We spoke with Dante to discuss his time growing up in Brooklyn, how the Mayor’s Cup encouraged his initial passion for running, his involvement in community outreach and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Intro and running origins:

My name is Dante. I am from Brooklyn. I was born on Atlantic Avenue, grew up on Dean Street. I graduated high school at One Hanson Place, and lost my virginity in Prospect Park. I’m a part of the firmament, baby. I’m as Brooklyn as they come. I grew up about two blocks from my grandparents. On my mom’s side, I am old-school Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens Italian-American.

I started running in New York City in high school. It doesn’t get better than that, unfortunately, running in New York City. They got us beat, us oldies, the high schoolers. It’s much more fun to run in high school than it is as an adult in New York City….

Running saved my ass twice. I came to running as a real punk kid. Originally I was a wrestler, and for reasons—like I said I was a punk kid—that stopped being available to me. So then I took up running my junior year. We’d run to drop weight and whatever for wrestling, and I was always good at that. My hand-eye coordination has never been great, but I was always good at a sprint. And I didn’t mind running. I’d always come in first when we’d do the four-mile runs for wrestling.

I loved being a teenager in New York, and I took full advantage of it. I was a punk. I was a good student but a punk, like breaking curfew, getting arrested, doing all the drugs, having girlfriends in different boroughs. It was a lot of fun, and I definitely don’t think it was misspent, but I definitely gave my parents a lot of—I’m about to have my first kid, and sort of thinking back on it. But it was hard not to. Also I was a great wrestler, so my parents were like, ‘Look, this kid can knock out a grown man, so who cares if he’s on the 4 train at 11 o’clock at night?’

And why is running in high school so good? When I started running, Mayor Bloomberg was in office, and Bloomberg had this big anti-childhood obesity campaign. Back then, the world wasn’t ending as much, so people would worry more about kids being fat rather than water getting sucked up by Jensen Huang or whatever. [Bloomberg] invented these things called the Mayor’s Cup right around the time I entered running. And the Mayor’s Cup was—I don’t know if they still do it, but every school in the city would get together, and we’d race at Van Cortlandt, and we would race at Icahn. We would do one in the fall, one in the spring…. We’d all take the subway together, so it’s kind of like every big New York City race in high school felt like The Warriors. Different schools, and we’re getting on the 1 train to go up to Van Cortlandt on 242nd Street, different stops, and then we all get there. And also in the Mayor’s Cup, you’re chopping it up with everybody….

And like I said, I was a punk. I would do either the mile or the two mile, and I’d do the 4x400, and in between I’d go out and smoke a butt. My best friend Carl, when we would do winter track, he lived on 165th…. I’d do the long distance, and then we’d wait for the 4x4, or vice versa, and it’d be too long. So I’d go and meet up with Carl, and we’d smoke a cigarette and hang out, and then I’d come back and race another race.

The thing is, running, it just made sense to me. It clicked. It was fun. Wrestling made me mean and channel the meanness, and running there was this freeness. For my parents, where they were always getting on me for breaking curfew and whatever—if I was out running, it was like homework, like, ‘He’s out running, he’s doing something productive, we won’t get on his case.’ My running route would be down through Red Hook along the docks, and back then it was super desolate, really lovely just running around, and that was it. It was soulful. I’d run out to the end of each pier and look out. I could channel my aggression and my energy into something that made me feel free. It’s like being in motion. I used to say, ‘When I run, I become love,’ instead of something angry and hateful like I used to do in wrestling. It was love.

On running after high school:

In college, I did literally three weeks of DIII, and I was like—no disrespect—I’ve always been in between two worlds in running, I just couldn’t get down with the 90-pound mean nerds that really good runners are a lot of the time in college. And every Sunday we had to do 13 miles, and I was like, ‘It’s not my vibe.’ And also I went to school in the Midwest, so it’s—once again no offense—I was just like, ‘I can’t be doing my weekends going to Kentucky, Indiana, and racing in Richmond, Indiana.’ So I just quit, and I didn’t run again for a long time.

I got a job working on a poultry farm a couple miles off of school, and I would do that. And then I started doing what I do now—Ohio had a great tax credit for film and TV, so I used to be a PA on film and TV sets that would come through…. Between being on film sets with best boys and grips and union guys and then working on a real farm with a bunch of Guatemalan dudes, by the time I was done with college I had a nasty smoking habit. I was probably smoking two to three packs a week. I wasn’t a Don Draper, because even in the year of our Lord 2016 you couldn’t smoke everywhere anymore.

What got me back to running was my senior year of college, this kid pissed me off on the running team, and he had signed up for a local half marathon. So to spite him, I trained my whole spring semester of college to beat him in the half marathon. And I did, and then I didn’t PR in the half marathon again until last year. I ran a 1:17 half marathon out of spite, and then I smoked a cigarette right after I crossed the finish line—I was a fucking punk—and then I didn’t run a faster half marathon again until last year.

After college, I rode a bicycle from Ohio to the southern tip of Patagonia, 10,000 miles, and in the interim I quit smoking. I was like, ‘I do not want to fail because I’m not fit enough, and I do not want to be the reason that I’m not fit enough is because I’m huffing buds, because it’s a stupid reason to not do this.’ And so I literally remember—there’s a part of Columbia right before I was going to hit the Andes, and then I knew I was just going to be in the mountains for months. And I actually had no idea how hard it was going to be ahead of me, because at the end I bicycled above 13,000 feet for nearly two months straight. So it was smart, I remember I smoked my last cigarette in the town before I hit the high peaks.

On running after college and getting into marathons:

I came back to New York, I was 23, I was working just a shitty midtown job, where I was just an assistant for filling out spreadsheets, just so boring compared to riding my bike to the wilds of the High Andes and chopping it up with Bolivian miners and stuff like that. And so I was like, ‘I want to keep this no smoking going, and I know I got it in me, I have the endurance ability to keep doing incredible things as long as I don’t smoke like I used to.’

I had taken so many years off running, I was so not into competitive running culture. It was pre-this COVID explosion of the marathon. Every year since I started running in 2010, it seems like running has beat the S&P. It’s growing like 20 percent year over year. It just keeps on expanding. It’s like totally not something that it was when I was 16. It used to be for mean, skinny nerds, and now it’s not. And honestly, even though I didn’t really fit in with those guys, I miss it. I miss when it was that, and it’s not anymore.

But anyway, so I started running marathons…. And I remember I ran my first marathon terribly. I didn’t really—I would just go to the Red Hook Track, I knew there was free track stuff there twice a week. And then on every Saturday or Sunday, I’d just try to run as far as I could. I didn’t know anything about fueling. And then also I would put all my stuff in a bag and just run to and from work for the extra miles. But it was all wrong. I was basically rucking, I was running with 20 pounds of gear to and from my office. And running in the fucking dog balls breath heat of summer, no fueling or water, basically trying to run as far as I could before my brain short-circuited. And I ran that marathon terribly. I remember there’s a photo of me on the Fifth Avenue climb…. I am green. I am actually green. I’m hitting the wall so hard.

Anyway, that sucked, but I was like, ‘I want to get good at this, I think I can get good at this.’ And then slowly, year over year, chipped away until I qualified for Boston. And then I qualified for Boston, and then I PR’d at Boston [in 2022].

On joining North Brooklyn Runners after his second marathon:

I ran with NBR because—they started right when I was in high school…. I remember NBR was one of the first few clubs that had fancy little uniforms. And I rarely ran up to Prospect Park. When I was in high school my main routes were Red Hook, whatever was the beginning of Brooklyn Bridge Park—I think it was being built around then—and the bridges. So I would see those guys, and so I knew they had fancy little uniforms, which I thought looked pretty cool, the black and the white. And I knew from going to Red Hook Track that people would just offer free meetups to run together as adults.

And then when I moved to Greenpoint, I was like, ‘Oh shit, North Brooklyn has all these free things, so I’ll just show up and I’ll get better. I’ll just go to these free events, and then find the guys who are running sub-three and sub-2:55 so I can qualify for Boston, and follow them around and get their routines.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, this is free, this is sick,’ and then started showing up, and it was really fun. I think from 2017 to 2020 I had just a very thankless job, I felt a little stagnant and not that creative, and I was doing like 70 hours a week. So running was a good outlet for that, for those frustrations of just being an assistant level person working in midtown.

On getting involved with community outreach and serving as Community Outreach Coordinator for North Brooklyn Runners:

I started doing a lot of community stuff when I ran my first marathon, because I signed up for this charity, Brooklyn Kindergarten Society, and they needed people to come by and volunteer for their kindergartens, and I really dug the nonprofit. It’s basically free childcare in really rough housing projects in Brooklyn. It’s for families who make under $40,000 a year, and what it was was Free-K, 3-K and Pre-K only covers 9-to-3 or something, it’s only a six-hour day. This program helps people for a full 12-hour day…. So I really liked that. And they needed people to come by, and extra hands for different things. And I remember the first time I volunteered, it was supposed to be like bring your father to school day, and male mentor day, and so I volunteered to be the kids’ male mentors who didn’t have them. I thought that was really sweet.

Anyway, so I was doing that, and I still kept at it even when I wasn’t raising money for them, because it just makes sense as an NGO in Brooklyn. And then when COVID happened, I was just living alone in Greenpoint, and I just turned 26. And it’s like, you are on your own and you have robust health, you can run as fast as the wind blows, like Forrest Gump says, you feel physically really good, and also you’re not going to infect anybody because you’re just at home in your apartment. So I thought, ‘I’m just gonna sign up for New York Cares and do all of the volunteering. I’m healthy enough that I can put my body on the line for this, I can actually get out of the house and wear protective gear and help.’ Also I shot a doc for essential workers who were out in the first wave, so I was already out anyway….

And basically when COVID stopped being threat level midnight, DEFCON 1, NBR was like, ‘Hey, you know about all these local NGOs and projects in the area, because you’re local’—and my grandma had started this NGO called Heights and Hills, which helps people who are homebound and elderly in between Brooklyn Heights and Flatbush get to community centers and get food and stuff, and so I was delivering groceries for them, and I did that for a while as well. And the NBR board was like, ‘Hey, you do all this stuff, and we want to have more of a community wing in NBR,’ and I was like, ‘Sure.’

I remember the first one I planned was the longshoremen at the Fulton Fruit and Produce Fish Market were going on strike. In the Bronx, in Hunts Point, which is on one of those nodes on the easternmost corner of the Bronx, is the second-biggest fish market in the world, and the first-biggest produce market in the world. They still call it the Fulton Market, even though it’s no longer on Fulton Street down by the South Street Seaport. And they were going on strike. And so my first thing I did for NBR was I said, ‘Let’s go run and bring food and supplies to the striking workers. Let’s fill up our running backpacks with snacks and whatever, and we’ll stop at a bodega before, and we’ll run there and then run back and we’ll call it a Saturday long run’…. And so I did stuff like that, and then that’s why they invited me onto the board….

And I still volunteer. You don’t notice as you get older, but you slowly get busier with things that are more serious. It’s one thing when you need to make money to pay for rent and enjoy an occasional night out in the West Village, but it’s a different thing when you got a mortgage and you got a kid on the way. And so I just don’t have as much time as I used to, and I don’t have as much energy as I used to. But I still volunteer for a crisis men’s shelter a couple times a year, where it’s a homeless shelter in my neighborhood. And basically I have dinner with the guys, help serve them dinner, and talk about the Knicks…. I don’t get a very good night’s sleep, because they give me a $50 cot that’s made of plastic. But once again, I don’t mind. I’m a very healthy young man, I don’t mind sacrificing one night of bad sleep ever so often to take care of these guys and make sure that they have a safe night of rest before they got to go back to the housing office in downtown Brooklyn and deal with that bullshit.

On his recent and future running goals:

Once again, I’m between these two worlds—I saw the next level as I got to get below 2:50 at Boston, where people I’d be running with were knocking back 22 miles at 6:30 pace on Saturdays, they were starting to get coaches, and saying, ‘I gotta have a diet plan, and no ice cream, and no beer, and no pizza, and I gotta have a coach, and I gotta hit 100 miles, I gotta double.’ And I was like, ‘I’m back to like the intense mean nerd that I wasn’t jiving with.’ And then on the other side of it…. I was [on the board] of North Brooklyn Runners for a while, and I did not enjoy dealing with these two different—when you’re managing an NBR, one of these big running clubs, you’re just managing those two different types of personalities, and I was just like, ‘Neither of these things are for me’.... And then I acrimoniously left North Brooklyn Runners….

I do what I can. I was debating on trying to run a marathon before my daughter is born in August, but I was too stressed with work. I think it’s just, that hunger for the miles, the hunger for the goal, it’s just lasered in, and you’ll do anything for it, and it consumes you, and you’re in it, and you’re constantly fatigued but in a good way, but you’re in it, and you want that goal—I don’t have it anymore. I don’t have it. I think I qualified for Boston, I PR’d by four minutes and 20 seconds at Boston, and I think that’s enough for me, man. I’m gonna try to go and break my high school mile PR in August. I’m at least 20, probably 30 pounds heavier than I was back in high school, so I just don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I can crack, it was like 4:43 or so, I just don’t know if I got it like that. But I’m gonna try before my daughter’s born….

I try to burn it and turn it a couple times a week and jog in between, but I think that’s it for me. I’m not trying to get back to these PRs, I’m always trying to get back to that Red Hook run when I was 16, where I’m running along Van Brunt, Columbia to Van Brunt, Van Brunt to Inlay, Inlay all the way to Conover, Conover and King, and then out to the end of Valentino Pier and back. I’m always trying to get back to where running is a place of quiet and freedom. And I get there most days, especially because I get to still run in Brooklyn. And I’m a sucker for the Statue of Liberty. What I love about that run is that you end at the end of Valentino Pier, where you just have this beautiful sweeping view of the harbor, and you see the Green Lady….

Honestly, the main goal for me is I want to be one of those guys you see in Central Park…those guys are just all wrinkled 80-year-old men, they’re like shuffling along probably churning 15-minute mile pace, and the folds are flapping in the wind, and they’re just shuffling, and they got sort of a smile, grimace on their face, and they’re still doing it. They’re still doing it. And I think that’s the real goal, is to be shuffling along Prospect Park as an old coot in 2070, 2080…. I’d just rather keep it moving. If I have to slow to a shuffle, and then my balls are dragging on the asphalt of the Central Park loop, so be it.

As running crews started to boom in New York City in the 2010s, so too did the scene on the other side of the country. And entrenched in the middle of that Los Angeles running scene was Jenay Meraz.

Jenay calls her running origins ‘like a hodgepodge story.’ The LA native didn’t run cross country or track in high school or college and simply learned on the fly as she navigated the ‘wild west’ of those early LA running crews, eventually growing into a captain role with Good Vibes Track Club.

But in 2024 Jenay decided to leave home and make the move to New York City, giving her the opportunity to ingrain herself in the running communities across both U.S. coasts. She says there are some clear distinctions between the two, including the abundance of club and racing options in New York. However, she adds that she’s still trying to build out that consistent community for herself in NYC similar to the one that transformed her running and fitness journey in LA.

We spoke with Jenay to compare and contrast her experience in the LA and NYC running communities, the interaction between the two as run crews boomed in the 2010s, what motivated her move to New York and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to give an intro of where you’re from originally, and then how you initially got into running?

Yeah, sure. I grew up in LA—I was born in San Diego, but my mom and I moved to LA when I was three, so I primarily grew up in Los Angeles. We also had a quick stint in the Bay for a couple years as well in middle school, but then came back. I went to school in Arizona, and ended up back in LA after that as well, interning, working. So LA is definitely my home. I consider myself an LA girl through and through, or Southern California girl, for sure.

I really think of my running journey as starting in high school, actually. So I played soccer kind of throughout childhood, very common. I was okay, not the best player. And in my free time or offseasons, I would just start running. I started running just on my own in the neighborhood. I grew up on the west side, like Inglewood, Westchester area, so I just was kind of cooped up in the house and needed something to do. And I continued that in college as well. In college it was more of a huge stress reliever for me to go for a run, and just kind of exhaust myself. I noticed that, mentally and emotionally, I was a little bit more stable. I was sleeping better, and just kind of getting out some of that excess energy, I guess….

And then when I moved back to LA after college, I got really into fitness. Just wasn’t in the best place with myself physically, just wasn’t happy with myself, the way that I looked, the way that I felt. So I started getting into fitness. I had some family friends that did Herbalife free workouts. So I was kind of just looking for any free workout class in LA. I had followed these girls on Instagram, Sammy-Jo and Valerie Julian, they run a store called Fruition in Las Vegas, and they’re very fashion-connected. Sammy-Jo had started running marathons, and she started a run club in Vegas, and then they opened a location in LA, in Echo Park. And so I saw that they had posted it, and I told my friend Kit, who is now the leader of Movement Runners in LA…I was like, ‘Can you please come to this with me? I don’t want to go by myself’.... I begged him to go with me. He came with me, and then we walked into their shop, and it was immediately like, ‘Oh my god, good morning, hi, who are you?’ It was very small, maybe like 10 people, all young professionals, very diverse. We just kind of felt welcomed with open arms that first day, and we kept going back.

So they only did Saturday 5k runs, it was very chill. But we just loved the people. And they convinced us to do the Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco, this was 2014…. And we were like, ‘Okay, we love this.’ We had so much fun. And we didn’t even race it all the way through. We were stopping and cheering for runners, and making tunnels, and just waiting for our whole team to come together. It was kind of like summer camp. We got a big house, and there were like 30 people in there. These are Sammy-Jo and Valerie’s friends from other cities that they know in fashion, so people from New York, people from Charlotte, San Francisco. It was really cool.

It took me a few halves, but then I was like, ‘Okay, let’s try the marathon.’ Did [the Los Angeles Marathon]. And now I mean, fast forward, I’ve done nine marathons, I’ve got two more this year. It’s like a hodgepodge story. I didn’t run track and field or cross country in high school or college or anything. I definitely just stumbled into it, and it kind of became my self love practice first I would say. And then community just took it to this whole other level of I loved meeting people and just connecting with other people. And that accountability of community and racing combined really got me to just push harder, and make it more goal-oriented, versus women very much work out for visual aesthetic purposes, usually. So I think making that switch to something that’s a little bit more goal-oriented was a huge change for me.

Before you moved to New York, you seemed to be very involved in the LA running crew scene and a bunch of different crews out there, particularly Good Vibes Track Club, where you were a captain for several years as well.

I’m curious if you can just talk through how you got entrenched in that community, how you started to find the different crews and particularly Good Vibes Track Club, and how you got involved and started to grow within that group as well?

So I started with that first club, it was called Mission I’mPOSSIBLE, or @mipworldwide on Instagram. I was with them from 2013 till it kind of died out in 2016…. And mind you, at that time I would say from 2013 to 2016, or those early years, there weren’t that many crews. There were the old kind of long-standing ones…. They were definitely an older crowd, still really cool, but just kind of doing their thing. And so those years are when Blacklist started, MIP started, and were bringing younger, more diverse people onto the scene, myself included. During those times run clubs only had their one day…. So we were bopping around to all the other crews every day of the week. And it was very much wanting to keep ourselves active, but also just like, ‘Oh, let’s go say what’s up to these people, let’s go check it out and see what their vibe is like, and how they run their program, or run around a different part of LA.’ It was really fun, now that I think about it, it was like the wild west.

And transitioning into Good Vibes, Nike shut down—they did a long-standing track night for a long time, they said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna go on a holiday break,’ and then they just never came back. They basically canceled the program. And this was track, so what a lot of us loved about that was it was something that a lot of us have never done before, and a lot of us noticed how we were getting fitter and faster from just that one night. A lot of people from different crews were going to this one night. It’s interesting how that ended, and lots of other crews have popped up after that, and Good Vibes is one of them.

So a lot of guys basically from Blacklist, they all were friends, and they’re like, ‘Damn, we really love track, let’s keep doing this, where can we find a track?’ So they just had a friendly group chat, were like, ‘Oh, meet up at this one spot, let’s keep this Tuesday thing going’.... They just kind of started programming themselves, and I was friends with them. I’ve known Marvin for a really long time. We had mutual friends from college, before we even got into running. I’d run with them at the track at Nike, and when I saw they started doing their own thing, I was like, ‘Oh, well, let me go pop up over there.’ They didn’t even have a name, it was literally just I saw them on Instagram running. So I started going there, really great. Not a lot of women at the time, there were just a few of us. But it was just kind of the same thing that I felt from MIP, that same diversity and young people—people my age, but also wanting to stay active and get faster…. They started in 2017. I kind of took a break from running, and I started later that year, and just kind of kept showing up. Then they came up with the name, and the Instagram.

And I didn’t get involved as a captain until end of 2019, beginning of 2020 officially. Basically, Nike was gonna do the Women’s Half again in March 2020 was the plan…. They gave Good Vibes a bunch of bibs, and they were like, ‘Oh, Jenay, will you help us lead this program? We have like 50 bibs, let’s train women for this half.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I love this, I’m down’.... I loved helping new runners kind of get to that next phase, because I remember being that new runner as well, and not believing that I could do 13 miles. So it was really, really cool.

As the community was sort of building in LA, was there knowledge or inspiration taken from elsewhere, particularly New York City? Was there communication between the different communities and crews in New York and LA in particular?

Yes, I’ll speak for myself in LA, I remember following other people in New York who were just kind of—Instagram was really building up, and definitely watching what New York City runners were doing, like Black Roses and Knox Robinson, definitely BridgeRunners. They were making it look cool. Like I said, there were run clubs in LA, but it was like this old man runner type of vibe. Which is cool, but I really reacted to people who looked like me and were making it look like a funner, cooler way of doing running. It’s funny now looking back, I was watching them do races, obviously New York [Marathon], but Miami Half and Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. And now that I live here, I’ve been checking off those bucket list races for me, which is really fun and cool.

But yeah, there was definitely connection, cross pollination. It’s a small world. We all kind of ended up meeting each other, knowing one another through different things, like [The Speed Project]. The first TSP—when they opened it up to other communities to do it—was 2016, and MIP had two teams that year. So I did end up meeting people from New York, from Mexico, from different run crews and run clubs for sure. And I would say New York was definitely kind of the first to do it in that way, and that urban running, cool, fast, young, hot community way. And even just watching them go to different races, and like do confetti bombs, I feel like we definitely wanted to emulate that, and like, ‘Oh, let’s do that too, let’s turn it up. Let’s have mimosas at the cheer station, let’s have a day.’

And Marvin visited New York with a couple other people from Good Vibes and Blacklist, or before Good Vibes was Good Vibes I think, and visited some crews here in New York. And Knox became his mentor. So I would say our Good Vibes program—it started on its own, but Knox definitely came in and upped the ante with his coaching philosophy and workouts and things…. So yeah, there was definitely a lot of LA to New York connection, for sure.

Can you talk through what made you decide to take the leap to move from LA to New York [in 2024]?

Yeah, it’ll be two years July 2, so coming up quick. I visited New York when I was young. My mom had done a couple work trips here, so I had been here maybe two or three times during childhood, and always thought—obviously in the movies, it’s really cool. Very different from LA geography and landscape-wise.

But in college, when I was thinking about where I would go in my career—I work in museums and art galleries—all the big museums are here in New York. This is like the mecca. So I had an idea about moving to New York maybe after graduation, but I didn’t want to move to New York without the job first. So I’ve kind of applied over the years, but nothing really stuck, a lot of people want to hire people who are already local. And so anyways, a recruiter reached out to me two years ago, it was March 2024. And then I started interviewing, I came out here, met the team. But work is what brought me to New York.

Can you compare and contrast, one, the running communities in New York vs. LA and any major similarities or differences you’ve noticed through your couple years actually living in New York? And then I’m sure there are obvious differences in terms of running in New York vs. LA, just based on geography and how the cities are laid out as well.

Yeah, for sure. I would say, for one, I feel like there may be more run clubs in New York than there are in LA. Mind you, I think the biggest difference is that in New York, we’re all on top of each other, we’re all scrunched into a very small space, and we are forced to see everybody that lives near us all the time….

I would say it also feels more competitive in New York. I think New York is just full of people who are go-getters and ambitious and competitive in their own way. And so when you show up, there are so many fit people, and they are definitely racing you next to you, a little more hardcore I think in that way. But I mean, I think there’s still a really beautiful running community here. Yes, there are slightly more competitive spaces, but there are really beautiful, inclusive, diverse spaces as well. So whatever type of runner that you are, there is a space for you, I think in both cities, but here as well.

And yeah, I think geography is just the biggest difference. There aren’t that many places in New York where you get really long uninterrupted straightaways where you can just zone out and run, whereas in LA there are definitely a few more where you can just cruise control, turn the brain off, you don’t have to think as much. And obviously the trail scene in LA in my mind blows New York out of the water, because it’s so accessible. It’s literally so close to be able to access Kenneth Hahn or Griffith Park, or Malibu Palisades, that whole area….

And in terms of racing…there are just so many races going on in New York all the time, whereas in LA it’s not that much. Like you have two Brooklyn Halves here, and we don’t have that in LA. You kind of got to go outside a little bit.

I’m curious if you can talk through your individual marathon journey—you did a couple in 2016, took some time off, and then you’ve sort of come back and forth….

What were the initial goals when it came to running marathons, how have they shaped and evolved since, and then what do the goals look like for you right now as well?

Yeah, so 2016 I did LA Marathon, and then I think it was only a week or two after I did TSP, which—insane experience to do right after you do your first marathon. Then Nike gave bibs out to do Chicago, so I was able to do Chicago that same year…. That was a huge racing year for me to kind of come out the gate. Since then, I’ve gotten opportunities to do Berlin and New York—New York through Good Vibes, Berlin through my work with Adidas Runners—and I’ve done LA three or four times.

So yeah, my MO is kind of racing, racing, and then take a year off, and then I go back into it. Marathoning really takes up a lot of your life, it’s a huge time commitment. And so I generally get a little overwhelmed, overstimulated, and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna take a break and let me just relax,’ or I’m injured. So a couple times that was due to injury, most recently as well. The year that I moved, I did LA, I did the Pour Tous Marathon that was part of the Olympics in Paris that summer, and then I also got into the lottery to do Chicago again. And during / after Chicago is when I got injured, and so I was in a boot and just took lots of time off to chill.

I think the initial goals when I was running marathons—I mean, first of all, it was just to do it, because I did not believe in myself that I could even do something like that. So I think that feeling of accomplishment was so beautifully overwhelming, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, wow, I can do anything, that’s crazy.’ And every time I do a race, a marathon specifically, I’m always like, ‘Yeah, I’m a badass bitch.’ My first marathon was like 5:17 or something. And I was saying hi to everyone, I stopped and cramped, I went to the bathroom like four times, I was like a hot mess now that I think back on it. My second one in Chicago ended up being like 4:11, so huge PR. And that felt really cool and really good, like, ‘Wow, that’s a huge difference in fitness and experience’….

I would say my goals now are just to be more consistent, maintain a certain level of fitness, and have these moments where I maybe amp it up toward a certain thing or race. I’m also trying to diversify my fitness, because for all of these years I’ve just been running, strength is always the first to go—yoga, recovery, things that I love, always the first to go out the window once the mileage starts to crank up. So I’m now trying to just take a bit of a different approach. I want to be more well-rounded. So I did a Hyrox last year in December in LA, which was so fun. It was great to mix it up. I had a lot of fun training for that last summer, and did pretty well, if I say so myself—I surprised myself, I’ll say. I just feel like the strongest I’ve ever been…. So I’m excited to just watch that kind of evolution within myself.

And I have two races this year, I have Sydney in the summer and Valencia in December. So for Sydney, I just want to finish healthy. I’m basically gonna fun-run it, and it’s a big trip, so I just want to enjoy it and kind of get that marathon feel again. And then I would say Valencia, since it’s a flatter, faster course, I want to try to do well if I can. And maybe some time in the process of this year, find a training group if I can. I think due to not having a car and geography, finding a steady training group [where] goals and timelines are kind of aligned with mine has been a little difficult. I was part of Good Vibes, that was definitely my heart and my family, so finding something that was similar here was obviously a tall task, and I feel like I’m still trying to find that—I feel like I have community, but I have not found that one that’s like, ‘Okay, this is my people, this is where I belong.’ So yeah, we’ll see.

Jamie Yellen says she’s someone that thrives on information and support.

That’s why when she first got into running over the pandemic, she sought out as many different resources as possible to help her throughout her journey. Those resources included NYRR group training sessions, where Jamie met a friend that introduced her to the Bronx Burners.

There, the New York City native saw an opportunity to combine her passion for running with her background in nonprofit management to help grow the Bronx Burners’ array of youth and adult programming. Now serving as the group’s Head of Programs, much of Jamie’s role is built around providing access to resources and information that families may not otherwise have in both running and beyond.

It’s a full-circle role that’s allowed her to give back to others in a similar way to what led her to the Burners in the first place. However, Jamie also describes it as a feedback loop where many of the kids she now works with inspire her within her own running as well.

We spoke with Jamie to discuss the path to her first marathon, how community leveled up her running journey, her favorite Bronx Burners programs and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to start off with an intro of where you’re from, what brought you to New York City if you’re not originally from here, and then how you got into running as well?

Sure. I am a born and raised New Yorker, so I actually grew up in Lower Manhattan as a child, before it was fancy and cool. And I left the city for a little while for college, but came back pretty soon after that, and so I’ve basically lived in New York City my entire life, save for five years.

I have always been an athlete. I grew up playing soccer and softball and whatever I could get my hands on, just being active. But I always thought of running as a chore that had to be done to stay fit to do those other things. After college, after moving back to the city, I would run here and there, but I don’t think I ever got it. It just never clicked for me as something that was enjoyable. And then the pandemic came, and that was my only outlet, right? I was stuck in a small apartment with my husband and an 18-month-old baby, and I was like, ‘I have to find some way to get out of the house, and I have to figure out how to move and feel good about myself.’

So I started just trying to get out there and run a couple miles a day. I took it as an opportunity to start learning about running more, so I would listen to a lot of audiobooks about running, while I would go out and run. And I just eventually found that moment where it became meditative and enjoyable for me to be out running and not just a chore, and where I could enjoy just the moment of being on a run and not doing it to get better in a different discipline.

What differentiated running when you got into it in the pandemic versus the times you’d run before then?

I’ve always been a very goals-oriented individual, so having things to work toward has always been really beneficial for me. So as I started to get into running, I started to build a little community around it of other people that were in quarantine and were running as their outlet. And so we had just a little virtual group that we would touch base on, and a friend shared a virtual challenge that you could do that was just a cumulative distance in July, and I was like, ‘All right, I want to try to run 75 miles total in the month of July.’ And so having that to work toward was really, really helpful for me, in just increasing my mileage and such.

I kept doing that, and getting more into it. Things started to settle down, I started being able to go and run some actual in-person races, and that was really fun. But I was still very much a novice in terms of the sport of running, and it was just something that I enjoyed. At some point, I decided to do something I always said I would never do, and didn’t understand, which was, ‘I’m going to try a half marathon, I really want to work toward that.’ So I found a virtual training plan, and followed it, and I did the 2021 NYC Half virtual because they didn’t have it in person…. It was just fun to do something that was bigger than I had ever imagined doing, right? I knew coworkers who were like, ‘I’m running a half marathon this week,’ and I was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why would you ever run that much?’

Then I got pregnant again, so I was like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna really run.’ And in 2022 my friend from grad school ran the New York City Marathon, and I was shocked that she was doing it. In grad school I never thought of her as the type of person that would go out and run a marathon. And just watching her journey and seeing that she could do it, real people that I knew could do it, made me want to do it. So right then and there, in my mind I committed to running the New York City Marathon in 2023, and I did. I ran for charity, for the organization that I work for, and so that’s how I got a bib. I found a training plan online, and was just kind of figuring it out, talking to everyone that I could about it. I started meeting more runners the more I got out there and just asking everybody, ‘Oh, this distance is crazy to wrap your head around, what do I need to know?’ And then I started doing some New York Road Runners group training sessions, because again, I just felt like, ‘I need more information.’ I really am someone who thrives off of having more information…. And that’s where I met my friend Jess, and we’ve become very close, and she’s who introduced me to the Burners.

When I went from being a solo-based runner to trying to open myself up to a community was when I think I really blossomed in the sport, and found more people who are like-minded and who kind of understood the journey, understood the insanity that you have to have to want to run marathons and were supportive of it. And I guess the rest is kind of history for me.

Can you talk through how the experience of that first marathon in New York in 2023 compared to your expectations, or just if you want to talk through that experience at a high level?

Yes, it was incredible. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never run that much in my life. I again was more or less self-trained here. I didn’t run in high school or anything, never really learned proper mechanics or anything. And so people would be like, ‘What’s your goal?’ And I was like, ‘To finish. My goal is to finish. And based on my training runs, I think I can do it between five and six hours.’ And as I started doing more training runs, I started reaching out for more resources. I was like, ‘I don’t feel like I understand fueling,’ and not just eating gels while you’re running, but leading up to a race, building in your training cycle. So I connected with a sports dietitian, and that was really helpful for me. So like I said, I thrive on information and support to feel like I know what’s going to happen, but you can’t know what it’s going to be like.

I had the biggest runner’s high for like a week after New York City. I was just so happy, the whole thing was like a party the whole time. Everyone’s cheering. I ran with a pacer, which was great because I was with a crew through like 20 miles, and then we veered apart, but that was really cool too. And then since it’s my hometown, I just saw people throughout the whole race. People kept coming out to support me, and that was such a boost. I kind of can’t imagine a more perfect day, a more perfect race experience.

People keep asking, ‘Oh, are you gonna run it again?’ I don’t think I’m gonna run New York City again until I have completed my six-star journey. I’m at three right now, and I have Berlin coming up in the fall. So hopefully New York will be my victory lap after I get my six stars, which I’m hoping I can lock down next spring, but might be a bit of a stretch.

How did you find the Bronx Burners—you said your friend Jess introduced you to them—and why is that group so special to you as well?

I’ve worked in youth development for over 15 years, and so when Jess had me come out to the Bronx Burners…. I just really liked the group, super supportive. I liked that it was track practice—speed workouts, interval workouts are often not the most fun for people, right? Those are some of the hardest workouts. So it was nice to have a group of people to do it with, and to push through it, and kind of have it be a little lighter, because it’s more fun….

Finding out more about their mission, I knew from Jess that they were also a scholarship-giving organization, and that they were growing. They were a very new nonprofit at that point, growing their identity and programming, and I was like, ‘This is kind of what I do.’ I am a youth development programmer, I’m a program director in youth development in the nonprofit world in the Bronx, and I work with kids, so I have a lot of those…. And so actually at that point I had a crossover where I also created a running club at work [WHEDco Running Club] because my colleague convinced me that I should share my passion and love of running with my students, that’s spring of 2024….

I remember the first practice that I brought them out to with Burners, I told them that anyone who beat me in an 800 I would buy them something from Amazon. I said, ‘Within reason, you can pick something and I’ll buy it for you.’ And none of them were listening to me as we were doing the warm up and stuff, and I was seeing them gas out, and I was like, ‘You got to pace yourself, you got to pace yourself, don’t go out so fast.’ And Shaq, who’s one of the co-founders of the Burners, came over to the kids and was like, ‘If you want to beat Jamie, stay with me.’ And only two of them listened, the rest of them are like, ‘Nah, I got this,’ and went out and burned out maybe after 100, 150 meters. I just was like, ‘I’m not going fast, guys. I’m doing this in four minutes, that’s my goal. I’m gonna run a four-minute 800, if you can beat me, I’ll buy you something.’

Two kids stuck with us, and Shaq was just talking in their ear the whole time. We were all there, the four of us together the whole time, and then the last 50 meters he was like, ‘All right, go,’ and they took off and sprinted. And so I bought them both basketballs, which they were very excited about. And that was a big moment, I think. That was just a pivotal moment in the development of their lives, my life, and Burners, because from there these kids came out every week, and many of them continue to come out.

Can you talk through that process of getting involved with the Burners and continuing to show up, toward your current role of Head of Programs—what made you want to take on a leadership role within the Burners?

Yeah, so I kept showing up with kids, and I kept talking to everybody in the club, I started seeing how they did scholarships. I think that there was a learning curve for a lot of the early crew of the Burners of who the people they were actually working with are and what their backgrounds and lives are like, and there was a huge disparity from the leaderships’ lives and backgrounds and the kids’ lives and backgrounds. And I have been working in this field with these families and other families like this for 15 years, so I had a much better understanding. So being able to be like, ‘I’m going to help bridge this gap, I’m going to help tell you what actually works in this community and how we can add value.’ And it just all started connecting, and it just worked at some point, and we all realized that we had these values…. Jess kept pushing, ‘You got to get Jamie in here, she knows what she’s doing, she has a degree in nonprofit management, this is what she’s been doing’....

At some point I did become a certified running coach, because like I said I like learning, and so I wanted to learn more. So I write all the workouts that we do each week now with another coach. And though I’m not usually the one who’s shouting at everyone on the track at practice as the lead coach, I am in the background doing that stuff and making sure it’s aligned with the races that most of our team is training for and their goals, and that there’s multiple access points for people where they are in their journey.

Any favorite initiatives or programs that stand out with the Bronx Burners that you’d like to touch on?

One thing that I really, really like about working with the Bronx Burners is that, since we’re new, we’re kind of lean, we’re just building some of our infrastructure and systems and scaffolds, there’s a lot of room to play and to figure out how we can make the most impact. And so I always like to think of our programs as, how are we adding value? And not, how are we recreating something that already exists?.... So I’d say my two favorite programs that we run are our two smaller programs in terms of capacity and how many kids we’re reaching per year, but I think long term these are two programs that are going to accelerate the trajectory of these kids’ lives more than anything else we’re doing. They’re very, very value-based programs.

So one is a summer initiative that we do with younger kids, kindergarten through second grade, it’s called Families for the Future. It’s a three-pronged approach to building healthy habits that is for the younger kids and their guardians, their families. So one prong is that they come to our weekly practices, we’re getting them physical, getting them moving, and valuing just taking care of their body. The second is through nutrition and access to fresh healthy foods. We’ll get them weekly fresh produce, and we’re going to do a nutrition workshop or two, we’re still nailing down the details of how many of those we’ll do this summer. And the third is college, like financial literacy. So we do a workshop where we teach them about college savings from an early age, we go over what a 529 is. We introduce them to the NYC Kids RISE program, which is a big chunk of money that’s already set aside for public school kids in kindergarten and first, second grade. It’s free money that most people don’t access, because they just don’t know about it. So we help them access that, and then we seed their 529 once we have that all set up, put in some money there…. So that’s one of my favorite programs, and we’re currently doing recruiting for the second group, second year of that right now.

My other favorite is, we call it The Next Lap, and so it’s kind of built on what I just said about, ‘Hey, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we need to give these kids access to what the elite families in Upper Manhattan have access to.’ So we’ve committed to investing $50,000 each year to five students, so each kid has a $10,000 investment. We start in their sophomore year, and we hook them up with an individual college counselor. And so we just pay for her, and she works with them through their senior year. They also, as part of that money, are getting individualized SAT tutoring. So again, we’re not bringing in a college counselor and just getting a group, and like, ‘Here’s what we can pay for this person’—this is someone who this is her job, and we’re gonna give them access to exactly what these other families have access to that they would never know of….

Those are my two favorite programs. Like I said, they’re pretty small, we’re talking about five to 10 participants in each of those per year. But they’re just going to have big impacts in their lives. So it’s really a quality versus quantity at that point. We do have some stuff that’s about quantity and about reaching as many as possible and creating experiences and access to physical activity, and that stuff’s awesome too. But for me, what lives in my heart is the programming piece, and that’s where I get to nerd out a little bit.

I’m curious if you can talk through how that involvement with the kids in Bronx Burners, or even just Bronx Burners as a whole, feeds back into your individual running journey?

Yes—I feel like I need to talk about one kid in particular. Many of these youth impact me daily, and I have great relationships with them, and they add value to my life by knowing them and by being a mentor or figure to them, that is very fulfilling for me. But I need to talk to you about Kaitlyn. She’s currently a sophomore in high school, but she was in the first class of WHEDco Running Club kids that I recruited. So she was in eighth grade when she started. And I’ve known her since she was five, but I didn’t ever know her until that moment in eighth grade. She was always really quiet, really kept to herself, just almost looked scared all the time to be around other people.

But I got her out there, and I remember after one practice she was hyperventilating, couldn’t catch her breath, crying. And I was just walking with her, talking to her, being like, ‘It’s okay, let’s try to get our heart rate down, let’s calm down, you’re gonna be okay, I’m here to help you.’ And she just looked at me and she was like, ‘No, this isn’t how this is gonna be anymore.’ And she locked in, and from that practice on, she’s one of the fastest kids out there, ripping all distances. She’s so gritty. And it’s just like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

I really felt connected with her in that moment—except she’s way faster than me—that sort of like-mindedness of what I said about being very goal-oriented. She was like, ‘No, I don’t want it to be like this. I want to be better at this.’ And she just did it. And she works incredibly hard to do it. She’s been recruited in her high school for cross country, for spring track, for winter track. We sent her to running camp two summers in a row with Bronx Burners. She’s always someone we think of for opportunities, she’s very grateful, her family is incredibly engaged in everything we’re doing. And so knowing her is such a gift and such a pleasure for me, and getting to connect with her over running. One, to introduce her to something that she’s now so passionate about, and is going to take her really far in her life, but also just to get to know her better and have that commonality.

And so the reason that I bring this up is that I just ran the London Marathon, and I was really nervous about it. In the middle of my training cycle, I had some injuries flare up. That was the first time I really ever dealt with injuries that took me out for a week or two of running, and I was missing huge parts of the build and the peak week, all that stuff…. So I was nervous about that. I’m a nervous traveler already, and I was like, ‘I’m going to London, I’ve been there before but I don’t really know anyone, I’m not gonna have crowd support that I know.’

It was one of the most incredible races I’ve ever run in my life. I think the crowd support rivals New York. It was intense the whole time, so supportive, and I was just so happy the whole time. And I think the key for me was that I used an app that another friend had told me about, called Rally. You create a profile and send a link to people, and they can leave a message for you at each mile…. And I sent it to Kaitlyn, because I was like, ‘I want you to give me one of these messages.’ And so I kept waiting, because I didn’t know who was what mile, and I was kind of waiting for hers the whole time, and it was just really fun to hear her cheering for me…and just knowing that we have that kind of relationship.

I get to have that with a lot of the kids, where they can confide in me, I can give them advice, feedback. We have a program that is for older youth that we started this last year too, called the 9+1 Pathway program. We had a bunch of scholarship recipients, they’re all 18 and up, who were like, ‘I really want to run the marathon next year, can you guys get me a bib?’ And Rob was like, ‘We need those bibs for fundraising, that’s a huge fundraising opportunity for us, but let’s subsidize them doing 9+1.’ And I was like, ‘That’s brilliant,’ because doing 9+1 is part of the process, right? You learn so much from doing those races in building up to the marathon the next year....

I have another young man, he’s in his young 20s now, I’ve known him since he was like 10, and he worked for me, he’s a great guy. He started coming out to Burners practice—we host our own race in July called the Bodega 1600. He had never really run a race before. He crushed his heat and won first place, and then decided to join track and cross country in college. And he won spring MVP and indoor MVP for track, and then Rookie of the Year. It’s like, he never would have come out and run.

It’s just really cool to introduce these people, introduce these kids and these young adults to something that they never would have done. And you think of running as being very accessible, right? Anyone can go outside and run, just go run. But as you start to really journey into racing, if that’s something you want, and participating in events, it’s limiting. You have to have some institutional knowledge. None of them would have known how to really do the New York Road Runners registration process…. We did a workshop where we had them come in the first time that they were registering for races, and they all came into my computer lab, we signed up together, and now they know how to do it, and they can do them on their own now. And they’ll run the New York City Marathon next year, knock on wood, and then they can keep doing this now, they have a good sense of how it works.

So I think it’s really cool to be a part of that for people. I told you I kind of went into a lot of this blind and trying to learn what I could, but just doing it on my own. And now it’s really awesome to be able to give people support on their entry into running.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on so far that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

In closing thoughts, I think I would just say that running is really special to me, and I think of it much more as for my mental health and wellness, and it’s a bonus that I get it for my physical health as well. And so for me, I’m a very extroverted person, and I gain a lot of value from being around other people. So being a part of a community of runners has been a really huge part of my life now, and has really impacted me in so many ways, and I just hope that that’s something that people know is out there for them.

One cool thing about running is if you want to be a solo runner and you’re more introverted and want that alone time, go for it, you can totally do that. But you can also get support and infrastructure from others, and there’s a big community out there of runners.

I always like to tell people, you need to learn to run slow before you can go fast, and listen to your body, do you. But just get out there, get moving, and I think you’re going to find a way to enjoy it.

Maryann Gong initially knew of only one mode when it came to running: to push.

It’s how she treated individual workouts, pushing every interval to the max, and also how she viewed her goals at a macro lens, going full-throttle with little appreciation for recovery. While the former All-American at MIT saw some success with that mindset early on, she eventually became riddled with injuries over her final two years of school and afterward.

Since then, Maryann’s developed a greater understanding of when to push and when to hold back, allowing her to stay healthy long enough to run a 2:38:44 PR at this year’s Boston Marathon, with eyes on an OTQ attempt in the fall. And now she’s utilizing those learnings in her professional path as well, taking a leap of faith to start her own company and build Toga: a personalized run training app.

Maryann says what makes the product unique is its emphasis on managing the little things outside of workouts, like strength exercises and tracking how your body feels during prehab, that help ensure runners can get to the starting line. She has her own injury history to use as inspiration, along with other lessons she’s gained from running such as unwavering belief and a long-term outlook.

However, she does think it’s funny sometimes when those in the startup world use the phrase ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’ when focusing on slowing down—“I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s a marathon, but marathons are fast too.’”

We spoke with Maryann to discuss the Central Park Track Club community that further motivated her to keep competing post-college, lessons she’s learned from her injury journey, the keys to her success in Boston and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to start off with an intro of where you’re from originally, and then your earliest memories of running and what made you initially fall in love with the sport?

Yeah, definitely. So my name is Maryann, I am from California, specifically the Bay Area—a town called Livermore, California, which is pretty far inland but still technically the Bay. And in terms of running origin stories, it really started I guess in high school, although from an early age I definitely loved to run. I distinctly remember my first time ever racing a mile was I think fifth grade, we had a timed mile around the playground. I remember I beat all the kids in the class, including the boys, and I was like, ‘Oh wow, I guess I am fast.’

I just played soccer and kind of was generally active, but didn’t really run seriously until high school, when one of my soccer friends, she was going to join the cross country team. And I had no idea what cross country was, but decided to show up anyways, even though she actually didn’t even show up to the practice, so I just went by myself. That’s how I got started, and ever since then I’ve just really loved it.

Can you talk through the decision to run at MIT—were you considering running at any other schools, or if you can just talk through that journey as a whole?

When I started running at the beginning of high school, I definitely had no idea about running in college, didn’t really think about it. But I got more and more into running, and I got better at running year after year, and started to get—I wasn’t like a Division 1 caliber recruit, but I’d say good enough that I got occasional letters from maybe not your top D1 schools. And so by the time I was applying to schools and colleges, running was still important to me and I wanted to run in college, but I wasn’t necessarily committed to competing officially for the team. I just wanted to go to a good school, academics was definitely the first thing in my mind.

I always loved science, engineering and math a lot growing up, and so MIT was for sure a dream school. And so when I was applying for them—MIT’s a DIII school, so I didn’t get any outreach from them necessarily beforehand—but I filled out the little application online, and then got connected to the coach, and that was great…. When I got in, it was definitely just a no-brainer for me.

What motivated you to continue running and training competitively after college? What were those initial post-college running goals—was the OTQ always on your radar, or did that come after the fact?

Yeah, the OTQ goal came definitely much later. The decision to run post-collegiately, I just felt like I wasn’t done or satisfied with where I left running. Even though I had some success in college earlier on, I definitely started to get pretty injured my last two years of college. I just felt like I really had more, and I really loved running, and just really wanted to know, how fast could I go? I just felt like there was so much more on the table.

And my husband, boyfriend at the time, was also on the track team at MIT, that’s how we met, but he moved to New York first, and he’s actually the one who joined Central Park Track Club when he first moved to New York. So I had heard about CPTC, I’d met Devon [Martin] before. And so when I moved to New York, I was like, ‘Okay great, I’ll join this team and just start hopping into workouts.’ I was at the time also working at Peloton, which was also very fitness-oriented, so I feel like everything just worked well together.

But what really stood out to me at the time is there was a really great group of women on the team, who a lot of them are still here and are super close to me now too, and a lot of them were all similarly Division III runners, which I thought was really interesting. I feel like it’s maybe a trend, at least in Central Park Track Club, where you see a lot of DIII runners who keep going after it afterwards. And maybe it is something of you weren’t completely burnt out during college, you just felt like you had more, and you really loved it. So I feel like that’s what kept me going after it.

I definitely was not going for OTQ things at first. I definitely was more of a track person when I first joined, not roads at all, and I still actually kind of love track a little bit more. But the injuries I had that started in college were really still there, and track was something that made it a lot worse. So after a couple years in the club I started to just explore road more as an avenue of maybe my foot won’t hurt as much if I do this instead. And then when starting to see a lot of other people that I knew qualifying for the Trials in the marathon, I was like, ‘Oh okay, well maybe I should try to do that.’ It definitely seemed very far away, especially when they lowered [the standard] from 2:45 to 2:37. But I feel like there’s something magical about seeing people you know going for it, so then I was like, ‘Okay, well if they can do it, maybe I can?’ And that’s kind of what got me starting to do that.

How did your experience at MIT specifically prepare you for balancing work and running post-grad?

It definitely was a trial by fire type of thing. And how it prepared me is more just like a mindset…. At least the mental strategy that worked well for me, and I apply this when I have crazy work or even training blocks now, is just having belief in myself, and also just no question about it. What I mean is I’ll have a big exam coming up, and you’re also running all these miles and all these things, and I’ll just tell myself, ‘Okay, the exam is in two weeks from now. Now I’m very stressed. But I know myself, and I know two weeks from now I’m gonna have studied it, I’ll have done well, I’ll have all those things done.’ And somehow just knowing that in two weeks I will be there would bring me calm.

It’s a combo of just trusting the process and just keep gritting through piece by piece, and just having faith that you will get there. For me, that’s how things that feel impossible or feel really big—like going for the OTQ, which used to feel so much further away, just being like, ‘I’m gonna do it,’ and just kind of putting it out there, and manifesting it I guess in some way. And then just putting your head down and keep going after it.

Yeah, it’s sort of like if you worry too much about it now, you’ll be like, ‘Oh, I need to start studying, and I can’t’—but if you set up running as almost like a non-negotiable, and just know that you’ll fit the studying in, definitely makes sense.

Yeah, actually one thing to add to that, what you said about non-negotiable makes a lot of sense, of just not giving yourself an option for you not to do it. And I feel like that really applies to racing, because I still remember somebody who I competed against in high school really early on, who was really, really good, I remember asking her one time, ‘How do you keep on winning all the time?’

And it was funny—obviously, she was really, very fast, but I really liked her answer, and it really has stuck with me throughout the years. She just said that she just doesn’t even imagine losing. She’s like, ‘I just don’t think about—I’m just gonna win. I know that.’ And I remember just being like, ‘Wow, that’s kind of crazy.’ It’s kind of delusional, but I think it’s also kind of powerful to just be like, you’re gonna do it.

You mentioned you dealt with injuries starting late in college, you dealt with more injuries-post grad as well in 2023, 2024. If you want to talk through that process, but also what were the main lessons you got out of that process, and what kept you committed toward not giving up on training at a high level and coming out the other side of it?

I’d say it started to get kind of bad my junior year of college, and I think all this actually stemmed from—I think it’s funny, because we were just talking about non-negotiables, just keep doing it. I think maybe the flip of that that’s not as good, is that the one thing I really didn’t prioritize a lot in college, and something that I take very seriously now, is recovery and sleep and nutrition. In college I was like, ‘Okay, non-negotiables are running and studying, so the negotiable part is sleeping.’ I just didn’t sleep very much. And also back in this time period, I feel like the conversation around fueling and making sure you’re fueling enough was very different. I definitely had some patterns that weren’t great, with just trying to be lighter and thinner, and all those things really contributed to getting a lot of injuries.

And it started with some classical stress fractures, but those were actually not even the most annoying part. The biggest thing was junior year I had a Haglund’s deformity on my left heel—got that chopped off later, that’s the 2023 part—but basically I had my heel bone sticking out into my achilles, and it was definitely a root cause for a lot of issues. I’d have achilles issues, I’d have bursitis issues in my heel, it would hurt a lot, I’d run differently, and then sometimes I’d compensate and get a stress fracture on the other side. I was out for my heel or for injuries on the other side kind of off and on through college.

Post-college when I finished my senior year, I actually had a stress fracture in my right foot…. That was I think seven months in a boot and 11 months of not running during that time period. After that I started to build back again, even though my heel was still a big problem throughout this, and I wasn’t really able to run more than four days in a week, which for marathon training is not really enough. I was improving, but I just felt like I couldn’t do as much as I really wanted to. And if I wanted to OTQ, I felt like that wasn’t gonna be easily possible if I couldn’t just run more. And so that’s why I finally decided, January 2023, to get surgery on it, an arthroscopic surgery to shave down the bone that was sticking into my achilles. It was a six-to-eight month recovery, I was able to start running-walking pretty soon after the surgery, but it wasn’t really pain-free and normal-feeling until eight months afterwards. But after that I remember going for a run and just having zero pain at all, which I hadn’t had in like eight years, and I remember being just really, really excited. That’s the injury saga.

I’d say learnings are definitely just recovery being key, and listening to your body. Definitely earlier on in college, and even right afterwards, I was just so impatient to go after goals all the time, and just push, push, push. Which I feel like in running makes sense, because you’re always kind of pushing through pain. But when I was not able to run for long periods of time, I realized how much more important just being able to run was to me, and really reprioritizing how I think about things through that lens. And now sleep is a non-negotiable for me, and making sure I’m fueling right and fueling more. And all of those aspects are things that I take into my training now, which has let me be healthy for the last two years straight, knock on wood. Before I’d alway be, ‘Let’s always push every interval to the max,’ whereas now I’m like, ‘Oh, if I’m feeling a little bit tired, maybe that’s a sign that I actually should hold back, even if I could go harder.’

Another thing I wanted to touch on was the app that you’re building. If you want to talk about what it is, and then also what made you want to go all in with that, and what made you think this is the right time to do it as well?

Yeah, the app I’m building, it’s called Toga—[the name] is not really running-related, but the reason why it’s named that way is because I originally wanted to build something for injury management, and toe yoga was a PT exercise I had to do all the time because of all of my feet problems, and that’s how that kind of cutesy name came about. But what it is now is not exactly that, it’s basically a run training app. And you could say it’s a Runna competitor, but why I’d say that it’s different is that it’s a lot more personalized and really adaptive, and it will help you train for whatever goals you have, but also look at your injury history and help you with your strength and your prehab, and remind you to do the little things about running that aren’t just workouts. But yeah, it’s just overall a personalized run training app to help people reach their goals.

And the reason why I decided to build this is last spring I was really just thinking about my goals in life. And I had two really big goals that I realized I wasn’t really moving toward, and one of them was I wanted to start my own company. I work in tech, and I’ve been an early engineer at Peloton, and then I was the first engineer at this women’s health startup, Evvy, for a couple of years. And I really loved getting increasingly smaller at the company size, but I really wanted to try—what could I do if I tried doing my own thing? And what I’ve learned from startup world things is that you do really want to choose a space that you are prepared to absolutely obsess over. And people definitely get obsessed with a lot of things that aren’t necessarily their personal passions as well, but I felt like I obsess about running personally anyways, so why not make it everything?

Also for my own journey, when I looked at other run training apps or other personalized training apps out on the market right now, I feel like everything’s really focused on general training and motivating people to work out. But I do feel like the different thing about runners is that people are generally pretty motivated already, and a lot of times you need somebody to help remind them to recover and really hold them back and help them think through and manage hard times with injuries as well. And so that’s kind of the problem space that I wanted to go after when I started building in that space.

How does your injury history and experience with that help you or feed into the work you’re doing with this specifically as well?

Yeah, I feel like it feeds into it so much. Not to say I’m the same as every other runner, everybody is pretty unique. But I do feel like there are commonalities that I see among teammates in the club, and teammates I’ve had over time, is how these injuries often start, and realizing that a lot of it is the little things every day. And things like doing your prehab exercises, or fueling right, or not pushing too much and just hitting the mileage numbers just to get those numbers.

I recognize all those patterns in myself and people around me, and so helping to be mindful of that when I’m building—for example, one piece is just helping people track over time, how is their foot feeling after exercise, and what are the different things that PTs have told me to track over time, and make it really easy for people to track that to stay on top of monitoring their pain, but also reminding them to do exercises. I feel like most runners, when something starts to hurt, it’s sometimes out of nowhere, but a lot of times there’s a little thing that starts popping up, and you ignore it enough times. And so those little patterns and little tidbits of what so many runners do are things that I’m trying to build in, like preventative steps in the app for that.

Are there lessons you’ve used from your running journey—obviously it’s a running training app, but outside that aspect of it—that you’ve applied toward building and starting your own company?

Or even you have a background in working at smaller companies and startups—how have you applied lessons from your running journey to just your professional experience in general?

There are so many overlaps. The whole grind aspect of it, you’re putting in work day in and day out, and sometimes the overall goal seems far away—especially in going for an OTQ, for example, that is a multi-year goal. And same with building a company as well, and reminding yourself to keep believing in yourself and just keep on pushing, is something that I take from running into work.

Especially in the startup world, sometimes you have to believe more than everybody else does, which I feel also translates with running. Sometimes people will be like, ‘Oh, that seems like a dumb idea, or you’re probably never going to get there,’ and having that faith in yourself and knowing deep down that you can do this is kind of what keeps me on track, and still motivated in the day-to-day when things feel really, really far away….

And especially in early-stage startups because people are going so fast, and a common worry is people burning out, a lot of times people like to say, ‘Oh, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.’ And they’re trying to say, ‘Oh, slow down, make sure you’re keeping things on the long-term goals.’ But personally, I find that it’s just a very funny thing that people say…. I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s a marathon, but marathons are fast too.’ And so whenever people say that, I get what they mean, but I’m also kind of like, ‘Hmm, I’m still gonna run fast.’

In your recent Substack articles talking about your latest training and racing, it seems like—even though you have such an extensive running background—you’re still learning so much with each progressive block and progressive race.

I’m curious if you can touch on any lessons you’ve learned from transitioning to the roads in recent years, or even if you want to talk more specifically of what are the main lessons that have stood out from this most recent Boston build and race?

Yeah, I feel like I’m always learning. Also the running space is having just so many learnings right now in terms of exercise science and learning a lot from other endurance sports like cycling and triathlon.

But definitely the big learnings that I had going into this block was—when everybody says this it makes sense, of consistency is key and all those things, but it is really true. It’s funny, because with the Boston build, it really was just continuing to build, doing similar things I was doing before, but just really being healthy long enough to keep on building instead of having to build back from square one.

And I think the other big difference is running volume…. It is helpful just to see, at least for me, how much improvement can come from just more easy volume, and not actually making the workouts that much harder, or even really that hard. And how fast you can actually get just by running more, or not even just running…but also cross training and things like that. And so maybe the meta learning is that you can get far by not necessarily making everything hard, and just being a little bit easier on yourself is gonna actually be helpful long term to not push yourself too much, and just make it so that you actually get to the starting line.

You’re right on the verge of the OTQ time, I saw that you’re gonna go for it this year at Chicago. Anything you want to touch on in terms of short, medium-term goals, if there are any other short-term goals you have on top of going for the OTQ, and then how you also think about long-term goals from a multi-year horizon?

Yeah, I think the biggest goal for this year is definitely trying to go for an OTQ push this fall, probably Chicago—although I’m already signed up for CIM also, so if Chicago doesn’t go well, maybe CIM also. That’s definitely the medium goal, and I do feel like it’s achievable. But I think in between then, what will be both fun for me but also helpful for that training is doing some more speed. And I am a track gal at heart, and I do love track, and I would love to get a 5k PR. And so in the short term I’m going to be doing some shorter 5k races this summer. I would love to run in the low 16s and get a PR and feel speedy, and I feel like that will only be helpful when I switch to more marathon mode in the fall, late summer.

In terms of multi-year goals, the OTQ is the big one, but hopefully I can do it this year. And what I do next after that, I feel like I have so many things. I would love to try to break 16 in the 5k, but also would love to see how fast I could go in the marathon. I just don’t really know what I can do, and I kind of want to find that out and just see how fast I can go.

You had a great race in Boston last month, but anything else you want to touch on in terms of favorite races or running memories over the years that stand out?

I think marathons are just always so fun, such a celebration. So Boston, I just loved it so much, especially since I have a lot of old teammates who live in Boston and running with them. New York was also iconic as well, just because it’s our city and we’re running through the streets of New York, and you just feel the energy from everyone. So that was also a great memory.

The other running thing that I do most years is Hood to Coast with this group of MIT track and cross country alumni. And it’s a really fun group, because a lot of them live in San Francisco, and then other places in the U.S., and so we usually don’t see each other the rest of the year that much. But we all kind of do a little reunion once a year, go to Hood to Coast, and run a bunch of miles and be stinky in a van together….

I go to Colorado every summer, my husband’s family lives in a small town called Buena Vista, which is like two hours south of Denver. It’s close to Leadville, it’s at like 8,000 feet [of elevation], and we go there also every year. And there are usually some random trail races that we’ll do, which is always fun and always very out of breath.

What makes the New York City running community special to you, or what’s your favorite part of the New York City running community?

I love how it’s a really strong community, but it’s super diverse. A lot of the people that I meet in my day-to-day are all tech people, especially being from the Bay Area. And when I look at all my friends I’ve made in New York, they all have different backgrounds, they’re from different places. Especially in New York, everybody’s from all over the world, and everybody has such different jobs and interests, and also it’s such a wide age range, especially in the run clubs. But there is one thing that everybody has in common, which is running, and I love that so much.

Few names are more synonymous with the competitive running scene in New York City than Jerry Faulkner.

Since moving to the city in 2012 he’s finished over 100 New York Road Runners races, including three separate top-35 finishes at the New York City Marathon. He’s been one of the most active participants in the NYRR Club Points series over the years while running for both Urban Athletics and New York Athletic Club, and has even dabbled in the unsanctioned world with a few OSR 10k wins.

It might come as a surprise then to hear Jerry actually attended the University of St. Gregory’s to play golf, before his friend convinced him to walk on to the cross country and track program. Over the course of his college career he cut his 8k time from 33 minutes down to 25, eventually graduating in 2004 and turning his focus toward the marathon.

Jerry began his post-grad running career traveling to smaller marathons across the Midwest to compete for podium finishes and earn some extra prize money, including a victory at his hometown Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon in 2006. But he says moving to New York made him continue to push himself in ways that few other cities could.

We spoke with Jerry to compare his experience in New York City to his time in Oklahoma, what motivates him now as a Master’s athlete, how the NYC running community has evolved beyond just New York Road Runners races and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On his background and running origins:

I’m from Oklahoma, I lived 30 years in Oklahoma, and how I got into running was being a college walk-on at the University of St. Gregorys. My best friend talked me into doing something new, because when you’re in college, you want to try to learn something new. I actually went to school to play golf, and then I slowly transitioned to becoming a runner and falling in love with running. My first 8k race was the OSU Jamboree, I ran 33 minutes, and then I came back the next three years and ran 25 [minutes] for 8k at OSU [my senior year]. Fell in love with running, and then I found out that I wanted to do this as a career as well.

On continuing to run competitively after college:

Graduating from St. Gregorys in 2004, there wasn’t much of a club scene in Oklahoma. Also colleges wouldn’t let you run unattached at a lot of these college meets…. So I ended up graduating myself up to the marathon. I ended up running my first marathon in 2005, running 2:32. Didn’t know how to train, really. I was doing about 70 miles a week, I mostly treated it as a long run. And this was right before Garmin, there were not quite GPS watches yet, everybody was still using Timex and all that stuff. Also there wasn’t too much nutrition-wise, on the gels, also water stations as well. And then also footwear, we were still in that racing flat moment, no carbon-plated shoes.

So I ran my first marathon in the New Balance 805, it was a 5k racing flat shoe, because I thought lighter the better, faster the quicker. And so went out for that first marathon in Oklahoma City, went through [half] in like 1:12, not taking liquids at all, just thought this was a long run, like, ‘Hey, I’ll just hammer it out, just hang in there, hammer it out.’ And end up getting to about Mile 26, I was going from 5:20s all the way to 7:30-minute miles. And then blowing up with about 200 meters to go, leading the race from almost start to finish, getting passed at the end.

And then next year I came in a little bit more prepared and did my nutrition better, and then really focused on the marathon. I fell in love with the marathon. Came back the next year at Oklahoma City, ended up running a little bit slower, but I ran 2:36, and ended up winning. And then my goal was to try to qualify for the Olympic Trials. 2:22 was still the standard a long time ago, that was in the 2000s. So my goal was to try to qualify for that.

I’ve run 25 or 26 marathons under 2:50, and I did qualify for the Trials with a 2:21 at Hartford. I’ve run three New York [City Marathons] competitive—I ran 2:26:42 in 2013, and then I ran 2:26:31 in 2014, and then 2:27:01 in 2016. So been very competitive in the running community.

On his career path within the running industry and moving to New York City:

Before I moved to New York, I was managing a running shoe store. And I really wanted to work for a corporation, a corporate company for running, and the best opportunity was to move to New York. And so I ended up taking a job to work for the check, working for Nike, and me and my wife moved to New York in 2012. Sold everything, moved to New York.

I worked for the check for about three years as a sales associate, and then I got a product educator position for Fitbit. You’re mostly teching out people, helping moving product. You’re not selling product, but you’re helping move product, and you’re educating consumers and sales associates about the product. So I was working for Fitbit for about six years, and then the pandemic happened. And now I’m with Adidas, and I’ve been with Adi for four-and-a-half years, being a tech rep.

What was different about running compared to the other sports that you had previously done growing up that made you really fall in love with it, and dive deeper into that than you’d done in your previous sports?

I would say with running, it was definitely more health benefits. I felt myself being healthier, also sleeping better. I was in a better mood, it was a greater stimulant. And I felt running was helping me grow, and it still helps me grow today. It has built my career….

And then golf, you have to have a little bit more income. And running doesn’t take any income at all. You just need a pair of shoes, and being able to get out the door and do it smart.

Can you compare and contrast the running community that you saw in New York when you first moved here versus the community that you’d experienced back in Oklahoma before that?

Yeah, so when I was in Oklahoma in 2010, 2011, there were not many run clubs. There was only one club called the Land Runners. And there were races maybe every two to three weeks in Oklahoma, maybe two or three prize money races….

And then I moved to New York, and I heard that this big club scene—people do this New York Road Runners club races thing, and they are looking for people to be on a team. So I ended up doing this first 5k that was in Central Park, it was a charity 5k, and I ended up winning the race, and I ended up meeting Herbie from Urban Athletics. Herbie ends up recruiting me to run for Urban Athletics…. Our big rivalry with Urban Athletics was Central Park Track Club, and then the next two clubs were West Side Runners and New York Athletic Club…. I ended up running for [Urban Athletics] for about a year, and we ended up beating Central Park—we ended up taking third, Central Park ended up getting fourth, this was 2012. And then I ended up getting recruited to run for New York Athletic Club. And then between New York Athletic Club and West Side, we were always battling for the top finishes for the teams….

Also one thing when I moved to New York as well, this place called OSR, Orchard Street Runners, they were giving out prize money for unsanctioned races. I’m not very good with directions in New York, so that’s why I’ve never won the half OSR. But I have won the 10k, because the 10k is just a loop…. I did the last 10k with [OSR], I almost got hit by a dumpster truck, so I decided to step back from that OSR lifestyle.

Can you talk about the distinction between the different parts of your running journey and the different goals within those as well?

Yeah, so I would say when I finally won the Oklahoma City Marathon, I started to take my running really seriously, where I was trying to qualify for the Trials and trying to get that standard. But also submitting my times—so being a sub-elite runner, you had to be under 2:30, and usually a lot of the smaller races will pay for your hotel, they’ll pay for your travel. And so I would start emailing race directors each year to see which races I would get into. So I got into the Fargo Marathon, I got into the Quad Cities Marathon, the smaller races where they still had good prize money. But I wasn’t going after the Chicagos or the New Yorks or Berlin or LA. I was more focused on going to these smaller marathons where they have money, but also it’s a reasonable time that you have a chance to win. So the time that would usually win these marathons is around 2:18 to 2:22 and even 2:25, and so I was right around that range…. And then when I moved to New York, New York was way more competitive. There was a lot of talent that was running in New York, and I feel like that helped me grow with the points series races….

Getting selected to be in the elite status for the New York City Marathon in 2016, that was one of the highest things in my career. And then 2015 we ended up winning the Boston Marathon as a team as New York Athletic Club, and that was another peak of my career as well. So that and then graduating into a Master’s athlete, where I made Team USA, but also making a U.S. team in the duathlon, and finding out that I’m really good at running and biking, just terrible at swimming. And then becoming a Master’s runner, and being able to beat younger runners and still breaking tape at my age, I’m pretty happy with that.

You mentioned New York Athletic Club a couple times, you said you were recruited over there. Anything you want to touch on in terms of what that group has meant in your running journey, how they’ve pushed you?

It was almost being like a professional runner, and motivating me to keep up with the guys. We had about 15 to 16 guys when I joined the team, and just trying to keep up, and staying hungry and staying motivated, racing these guys, that’s why I feel like I ran some amazing times with New York Road Runners. I ran Team Champs, ran 24:57 [for five miles], I ran under 20 minutes for four miles. It’s motivation. When you have people that are fast and you have people to chase, and you’re getting faster as well, it makes you so much stronger mentally.

One thing you’ve talked about in the past as well is how New York City pushes you in a way, and just doesn’t allow you to be complacent.

How has that helped whether it be in your running journey or just life journey as a whole?

I think just life journey, because New York has definitely motivated me, making me strong, because it’s never been easy. Also with running in New York, there’s so much good talent, I’m humbled to be just treated as an everyday runner as well. Because some people reach out to me, like, ‘Jerry, you’ve been running New York Road Runners races, you’ve been running so fast for so long, you should be able to get in.’ And sad to say, I only got into the Bronx 10 Mile [in the last signup period]. I didn’t get into any other races…. The city treats you as just a normal person. You’re nothing special. So that’s a good humble pie, but it definitely motivates me to work harder and to be stronger and try to be great and try not to be average.

So that’s one thing I love about New York, is you always got to be grinding. You cannot sit back and just expect things to come to you, because they do not come to you. So that’s one thing about this city…. You got to grow, you got to stay hungry, you got to be able to thrive when you’re down and you got to win. You can’t be losing. If you’re losing, you won’t live very long here.

You’ve done a lot of races within New York City specifically over the years, you are involved in almost everything. Do you have a most underrated race, whether it be a race series or anything, that you think everyone should be doing?

I think there’s a good group of race series that’s put on by Queens Distance Runners. They’re doing a lot of races that are affordable, but also you can get into. And I feel like that’s more of a community, because a lot of people that put on those races are people that love running. They are community. They’re not paid for it, they’re volunteers. And I feel like the Queens Distance Runners do a great job of promoting road racing, because they put on a race every two weeks.

And then also another good timing company is Elite Features. Elite Features does a great job supporting those smaller races as well.

And then just with the pandemic, the people that kept the running community going competitively was Trials of Miles putting on track races. Because when the pandemic happened, nobody was able to do any track races at all, nobody could do any road races, so we couldn’t really race. And so Trials of Miles really brought that back.

What do goals look like now, whether it be in the short and medium term—so this year, the next couple years—or even long term, how do you think about goals at this point in your running journey?

This year I’m really trying to break 16 in the 5k. I’ve already got one of my goals, winning the Master’s Open at the Boston Marathon 5k. Then going into this year I want to win the Master’s for the marathon, so still be competitive in the marathon. I want to get back to my 2:30s when I ran a long time ago. So that’s one thing that’s really motivating me. And then being able to be very competitive, being able to compete for my team, being able to win some races. So staying hungry and trying to win, that’s what motivates me, is to be competitive and to compete against the best.

You’ve touched on some experiences, including that 2016 New York City Marathon Pro field, but anything else in terms of favorite running memories or favorite race memories that stand out over the years that you’d like to touch on?

I would say winning the Oklahoma City Marathon. That’s my favorite one because I won my local marathon, I won that in front of my family, and that was a huge step in my running career. I’ve been coming back the last couple years to be a guest speaker, and I finally got to run it [again] this year [after some injuries].... I love Oklahoma, also I love New York. I love both. But I will be cheering for the Oklahoma City Thunder, if the Thunder play the Knicks [in the NBA Finals].

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or any closing thoughts?

I would say the cool thing is there are some smaller races that are competitive as well. So Reach the Beach is a great event, they do that in June, and that’s on the Rockaway. And that’s freaking awesome. I feel like a lot of people are taking the opportunity to make their own smaller races that are competitive. I know the Bandit Grand Prix is going to be on [May 30].

One thing that’s cool about the city is there are so many little cool events going on. Before, there was nothing but New York Road Runners and NYCRuns. And now you have other opportunities to do racing. Running is thriving in the city. It’s not about New York Road Runners, it’s about the community. I feel like New York Road Runners has a part of the community, but they don’t own the community. So the running community is getting bigger, and it’s getting more popular, and I feel like it gives the chance for events to grow more.

Juan Torres describes his running style as ‘chaotic.’

When he first got into the sport as a teenager, it wasn’t with his school’s cross country or track team. The Harlem native would simply lace up his shoes, leave with no specified end point in mind and get lost exploring New York City.

That approach naturally drew him to crews like BridgeRunners and unsanctioned races with OSR as he started getting more involved in the broader NYC running community. And as that community continues to grow, he’s learned just how important it is to focus on the aspects of running he enjoys most and avoid giving into the pressures around him.

We spoke with Juan to discuss waiting for the right time to run his first marathon, why he felt burned out from the sport last year, how that’s shifted his long-term running goals and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Just to start off, if you want to give an intro of yourself, where you’re originally from and then how you initially got into running as well?

Yeah, definitely. My name is Juan Torres. People in the running community here in New York know me as Harlem Juan, because I was born and raised in Harlem, and I’m always dragging about how Harlem is the best neighborhood in the city.

I started running when I was 12, when I moved back to New York in 2009. A few of my cousins were already runners, I lived with my uncle back then, and he just got me involved into running. He said, ‘You have the body type for a runner,’ and boom, started running. My first pair of running shoes I actually showed up with a pair of Converse. And since then, I just started meeting people through running over the years, in middle school, high school as well. Never got into high school running or cross country stuff with school. Everything I did running-related was outside of school, just finding things out by myself basically.

What were the goals with running, or what did running look like for you before you started getting involved with [the NYC running community later]?

Moving to New York City, where I didn’t know anybody, I think I just wanted to have friends, meet new people, also just explore the city, getting lost. And running gave me that platform to do so. I started putting my running shoes on and just go out there in the city, get lost without knowing where I was or where I was going to finish my runs….

The first running group that I started running with, it was literally a group of just kids. Most of us were 15 to 19 years old, middle school, high school, like an after school group outside of school, nothing related to school.

I ran my first half marathon in 2011, I did the NYC Half. And I was generally very scared…. I finished the race, and I had a pretty decent time. And I think that's when everything changed about long-distance running, and I said, ‘I really enjoyed this, I had a good time, I had so much fun. And I think I might continue to do it.’

You’ve been involved with Queens Distance [Runners], Urban Athletics, BridgeRunners, GFTC, OSR and more recent clubs as well. What was the first official crew you joined and how did they progress you in your running?

Yeah, so I initially started working at a running shop on the Upper East Side, Urban Athletics [in 2017 or 2018]. The owner, Jerry Macari, he had his group based on his running shop. Great athletes, great runners, different ages, pretty fast team for Masters honestly. So I would say that was my first official running group. They opened the doors for me to get even deeper into racing in New York City….

I joined Queens Distance Runners because of Kevin Montalvo, who is the co-founder of Queens Distance Runners. Really love what he does for the community. Especially in Queens, where it’s not as popular a borough for running today, compared to Brooklyn or Manhattan for example, where it’s oversaturated with different running crews now. Which is fine, I think it’s great for the sport, it’s growing. But I feel like it’s not the same as what’s happening in Queens, where it’s more actual community….

Running with GFTC, I think that’s where my running exploded. Then I joined OSR, and OSR just took it to a different level too. I’ve known Joe and Corey from OSR for a long time, but I was always very scared to run with OSR, just because these guys will show up and they will go all out and let it rip. And I would think to myself, ‘One day I’m going to join these guys, and hopefully stay behind them.’ And even today, I try to stay with them, and sometimes there’s a big gap between whoever’s in front of me. But it encourages me to keep pushing forward.

You said you started running with OSR. Obviously some of their unsanctioned races, especially the midnight or 2am runs, are pretty unordinary. What attracted you to that, and why do you keep enjoying doing that?

Yeah, I think it fits my running style—electric, energetic, chaotic, not knowing where to go. That’s how I relate to it, because when I started running, like I mentioned earlier, I would put on my running shoes and just go out there with no specific route in mind, and I would end up somewhere random, just to get lost. So I really like that aspect of it.

All paces are welcome. I will always encourage people to register for one of the OSR events, because I think they’re very fun, but very welcoming as well. And I think there’s a place for everybody in there.

Your first marathon was 2022 Chicago. You’d been running since 2009 at that point, you ran your first half in 2011 and then got involved in the community aspect around 2017.

What was that journey like to that first marathon, or what finally convinced you in 2022 that this was the time to take that next step and try a marathon?

It was definitely a dream and a goal to run a marathon. I never felt pressure to do one. I generally waited for the right time to be like, ‘Okay, I think I’m ready for the distance, and I’m ready to put in the time and sacrifice social life, put in the work.’ I would see all my friends do marathons over the years, and again, I waited for the right time, and I made it happen.

Back then I was running with GFTC. I remember waking up at least once or twice a week at four in the morning, get on my bike from Harlem, drive the bike maybe 10 miles into Brooklyn to do a speed workout with the group, and then bike back to the Upper West Side, another 10 miles, and go to work. And I think the discipline also just of getting the work done really motivated me more for the marathon. And also just people in the running community here too. When you get yourself involved with the right people, I think that’s the best, because people push you to be the better version of yourself.

But I was definitely nervous to do the marathon. I didn’t have a goal in mind besides just finishing the race. And I ended up doing a good time for a first-timer, I think it was 3:10.

You did at least a couple more [marathons] over the next couple years. How did the goals sort of evolve over those next couple years, at least in the marathon specifically?

After the Chicago Marathon, maybe a month later, I said to myself, ‘I felt pretty good, I feel very strong, let’s do another one. Let’s see if I can go a little bit faster.’ And I did. I registered for the Tokyo Marathon in 2023, and that was a very tough training cycle because most of it was throughout the winter, and it was very cold. But I applied the same level of discipline from Chicago and all the fitness that I had built from the Chicago Marathon throughout that training cycle of Tokyo.

And the Tokyo Marathon was my dream marathon. None of my family members had ever been to that side of the world. Especially for something running-related or sport-related, I was the first one in the family to do something like that.

How do you think about running goals either right now in the short and medium-term future, or even long-term, whether it be times for any specific races, or even going from more time-focused to more experience-focused as well?

Yeah, I don’t want to sidetrack from your question, but last year, 2025, I actually didn’t do much running. I burned out. I felt like I was just putting too much on my system, mentally and physically. I wasn’t motivated. I kind of lost a little bit of the love for running as well. Just there’s too much pressure nowadays in the running scene in New York City, and I just felt like I let it consume me. Also ego, it’s not healthy for you too. So I just felt so demotivated and not wanting to run.

And now going back to your question, I think my long-term goal right now with long-distance running is just have fun with it, honestly. This year has been great. I’ve been trying new things as well, just to implement into my running. Right now I’m focusing more in shorter distances, 5k, 10ks and half marathons. I think one of my goals in the future is to run an ultra-marathon. I’m looking for a 50-miler maybe, something where I don’t have to go fast, but I can push myself and put in a lot of effort as well.

You mentioned Tokyo, but anything on top of that in terms of favorite running memories, or race memories, or anything else that stands out?

Yeah, I believe it was 2024 Brooklyn Half. Literally at the end of the race, like the last 800 meters, when you’re on the boardwalk—it was a very hot day, a gentleman just fell. He seemed in distress, he was just dehydrated, or something was going on. I passed him and inside of my head, I said, ‘You know what?’....

So I sacrificed my time for another human, which I think also made me realize that running, it’s not about just you, but also the people around you. And that all of us who show up at the starting line, no matter what corral you are, at the end of the day we all are wanting to achieve the same goal, to get from point A to point B. So I went back and I picked him up, and one of the medical staff picked the gentleman up and took care of him, and that’s it. But I think that moment really stuck with me.

What’s your favorite part of the New York City running community as a whole, or what makes the New York City running community as a whole special to you?

For me, running in New York City, the whole running scene, it’s all about culture. And also running in New York City, it’s more than running. I feel like it’s a religion. Like I said, you meet a lot of people from different places, you learn from other humans too, you learn why they started running. For example, with BridgeRunners, I’ve learned so much about New York City through Mike Saes, and I also connected with a lot of people through Mike Saes too. So that’s been pretty dope.

You said when you got into running, a lot of it was just you’d go out and get lost and not have a specific route in mind.

So on that note, do you have a most underrated running spot or running route in New York that maybe you found over the years, that isn’t one of the main popular ones?

I would say running through Red Hook, it’s pretty dope. It’s quiet, you’re right next to the water. You can also see the Statue of Liberty as well in certain points. I think it’s a very underrated route.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or any closing thoughts?

I mean, all I want to say is maybe just for the running community, just to keep pushing forward. Don’t let pressure from other people determine your goals in running. Go out there, have fun. At the end of the day, it’s you versus you, and don’t let your motivation be driven because of other people’s goals.

Because that’s what happened to me, and that’s why I burned out, if I’m being very honest. I got caught up in the game, racing and trying to hit certain goals because I saw other people hitting certain goals. And in certain cases I did, but I would end up just like, what’s the point?

Chris Dougé joined the cross country and track team in high school. But he’s said it wasn’t until over a decade later that he truly ‘discovered’ running.

The Brooklyn native was looking for something to be passionate about outside of work at the time, and decided to return to his running origins with loops of Prospect Park. There, Chris found groups such as TeamWRK and Goldfinger Track Club, got swept up in the ‘contagious’ energy of the New York City running community and first began to identify as a runner.

He signed up for the 2021 New York City Marathon, naturally hit the wall in his initial attempt at the distance and spent a few years chasing sub-three. Chris eventually broke the barrier with a 2:52 at the 2023 Chicago Marathon, a race he remembers as one of his favorites not because he broke three hours, but because it gave him the freedom to start testing his limits beyond that artificial round number.

Chris has since run times he never thought would be possible for himself, including a 1:15 at last year’s Trials of Miles Project 13.1 that reignited the fire to continue pursuing his potential. That commitment to long-term trajectory is a lesson he’s applied to other passions as well—such as building A Mile A Minute—and it’s the basis of creating the Instagram page for Black Distance NYC, something Chris hopes will help inspire others to not just try out running but stick with it.

We spoke with Chris to discuss the origins of Black Distance NYC, how hitting the wall during his first marathon fueled his commitment to the sport, the vision for A Mile A Minute and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to start off with a general intro of where you’re from, why you decided to stay in Brooklyn and New York City and then how you got into running initially?

Yeah, for sure. So Chris Dougé, born and raised in Brooklyn, which is more and more unique now…. I’ve traveled a lot, spent time in different places, but there’s never been a place that felt like home, and it’s really not because of anything else besides the people. I think New York is so hard to live in, there are a lot of things that aren’t great. But there’s just an energy around the people, the creativity, the minds, that you don’t get anywhere else, that you’re kind of willing to deal with all the New York-isms because of it.

So I started running in high school, really as a way to meet people. I grew up on one side of Brooklyn, and then I went to school all the way in Bay Ridge, which is pretty far. I went to this all-boy Catholic school called Xaverian, and I didn’t really know anyone. I didn’t really have a sense of what cross country was, but they had a tryout, and I was like, ‘Well, this is a great way to kind of just meet folks.’ I ended up meeting a kid who lived in my neighborhood who joined the team, which was pretty cool, became one of my best friends. And we were track runners together. I never imagined myself as being a runner. I had a general sense that I was pretty fast from just playing sports as a kid and doing races like that, but never in any type of formal capacity. I imagined I would join the basketball team, but by the time they started tryouts I was already well within the cross country team and probably one of the better runners, and just kind of stuck with it all four years…. But I didn’t consider myself a runner. Outside of going to practice, going to a track meet, I would just hang out with my friends, and we wouldn’t talk about running. We weren’t like, ‘Oh yeah, this meet’s coming up where I got to run this time.’ It was not part of our personalities. It was just something we did as a sport and then didn’t touch.

But then fast forward maybe 2018, 2019, I just found myself deep in the work grind. I worked in sales, a typical 9-to-5, and was just looking for something else to kind of be passionate about, something to have outside of work. I was in the grind of Monday we have a happy hour, then this day we have a meeting, and I was just like, ‘All I’m doing is eating and drinking every day,’ to the point where I felt like I didn’t recognize myself as an athlete anymore. And I thought about when I was in the best shape of my life, is when I was running. But I didn’t think of it as working out, I was just running. And I kind of started getting back to that.

And my idea was go to Prospect Park, run a loop, three-and-a-half miles, and that was it. I would get there, run the three-and-a-half, I never in my mind thought about doing two loops, or adding to it. It was just like, ‘Yeah, this is the defined distance, you run that, and then you go home.’ And started to get a little bit in better shape from just doing it once a week, then it was twice a week, then I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I can do it a third time.’ And that’s how I met people from the running community. Just being there consistently, I would start to see groups gathering, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of cool that people are doing this together.’ That was my first introduction to the running community itself, and run teams. And from there just kind of went full speed ahead into it.

On that note, you’ve talked before about how you joined some of these groups, whether it be TeamWRK or GFTC, and how those had an impact especially early on in your running journey….

Can you talk about the impact of those groups and that journey to signing up for that first marathon?

For sure. I mean, straight up, there’s just not a lot of runners of color in the recreational space. And then you find a community of people who are doing it consistently, it’s just attractive. It’s like, ‘Oh, wow. If they could do it, I could do it too.’ I remember I’d see [GFTC founder Jerry Francois] around on Instagram, like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. He’s an adult, and he’s running.’ It brought me back to track days, like they’re on a track, they’re running. TeamWRK, same thing…. It seemed a lot cooler than going to the gym and lifting weights. It just seemed like a much freer sense of exercise.

And then yeah, just stayed committed and consistent. At that time it was just run on Tuesday, run on Saturday, run on Tuesday, and that was fine. This was right before the pandemic, and then March hit, and all the races, everything kind of stopped…. I wasn’t into racing or traveling, or all that kind of stuff. For everyone else, it seemed like a big deal that there were no races. And I was just kind of like, ‘Well, I could still go to the park, I could still do—like, nothing has changed.’ But then when races came back, I saw a new emergence of New York City energy, where you’re seeing more runners in the park, you’re seeing people excited, you’re seeing a little bit more intensity in terms of how people are training. And I was like, ‘Oh wow, everyone’s really excited for the New York City Marathon, or Brooklyn Half, or this, that race.’ And I got caught up in that excitement.

I didn’t think of myself as a marathoner, didn’t really think of myself as someone that was going to do it forever. But that energy is kind of contagious. And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to try it, I think I could do well,’ and was probably overly ambitious. But that energy, just kind of got swept up in it. And that was the 2021 New York City Marathon, and the 50th anniversary, so there was a lot of hoopla about that. So I ended up doing that one as my first.

Just going from there, again you’ve talked about in the other interview that you’ve done how you ended up going maybe a little bit slower than you initially hoped, and if that race had gone well, you’re actually not sure if you’d be the runner you are today….

I’m curious if you can just talk about that experience in general, but also how that’s made you rethink how you view whether it be failures in races or even just failure in general?

Yeah, I’ll tell you the mindset then versus the evolution now. So back then, I was completely devastated, right? At that time, you think you put everything into something, and it’s going to be easy. Not to say that I underestimated the race itself, but I thought it would be a lot easier than it actually was. I underestimated all the other non-running things. And I was super competitive at that point, and had an idea of, ‘This is where I should be.’ And it wasn’t even an exact number, it was kind of a range. If I fell anywhere within that range, I would have been like, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty good day.’

But to be so far away from that was like, ‘Oh, wow. I got to at least get into the ballpark, right?’ And that made me explore my mistakes…. After that, you want revenge and you want to do yourself justice. And I think now it’s more like, ‘Oh, that’s just part of the process, that’s actually part of the evolution of just being a runner.’ That story that I felt was so personal, is actually pretty common, right? If you talk to runners, they’ve all had that bad experience, and then that’s where the growth comes. I easily could have said, ‘You know what, never going to do this again.’ But challenge yourself to get back out there and allow a better outcome to exist. That’s part of the evolution.

You ended up running [3:00:34] in Chicago the next year, eventually broke three [with a 2:52:42] the following year after that.

After you broke three, and you eventually got into that range that you initially wanted to be in, how did the goals within running evolve from there? What are your long-term goals, or even just how you think about goals as well?

I think once that initial barrier of three hours—and I don’t even want to say that it was my goal. It was more so just people talk about it a lot, ‘Oh, sub-three, sub-three.’ And I just happened, fitness-wise, to be in that range, right?.... I’d run other races, I ran a half—I think I ran 1:40 my first half, and then 1:28 and then I was running 1:25, so it was just kind of the goal that presented itself.

And once you kind of hit that first barrier, it’s a freedom where I was like, ‘Okay, now I can do the right thing.’ Before breaking three hours, it was just like, ‘Oh, I gotta do this thing.’ And sometimes you do the wrong thing, ‘Oh, I gotta run a little faster because I gotta break three hours, or I gotta rush back into this workout.’ And then after that, it was like, ‘Nope, it doesn’t matter. This is my pace, so I gotta run this pace now.’ Everything I’m doing now, in hindsight, it seems like this is the right, proper way.

I don’t care if I go out and run a one-minute PR, I don’t go out and try to run a time that is a round number. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m fit to do this, because I’ve shown the ability. I’ll go out and do that.’ And I think that’s a lot of freedom. I think a lot of runners I talk to, those barriers are like limitations. It’s like, you’re probably a 3:05 guy, go out and run 3:05 and be happy with it. You’re trying to break three hours and then you’re kind of setting yourself up for failure every time. But you’d be so much more confident if you just went out there and ran 3:04 or 3:03, and then took the next steps, right?....

People love round numbers. I think people get caught up on round numbers. And that’s the biggest benefit from my running experience is that I just have the freedom to be like, ‘You know what? A 2:51 is just as good as a 2:50 to me, if that’s my fitness.’

You’re one of the co-founders for A Mile A Minute. Curious if you can talk about the origins for that, the general gap that you saw that you’re trying to fill, and also just why you felt at the time that it was launched, why that was the right time?

Yeah, for sure. And I think if you look at the running space, the boom we’re experiencing, there are so many eyes, there’s so much attention on running, and there’s really nowhere to put it, right? It’s not a sport that’s covered by ESPN, or Bleacher Report, or these big outlets, outside of the Olympics. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t care about it 24/7. And people care about it in a way that’s a little bit different than other sports, where they care about the pros, they care about the everyday runner, they care about the shoes, they care about nutrition, they want advice, they want entertainment. They want a little bit of everything. And really, the goal with A Mile A Minute is to kind of centralize some of that interest into one place.

There are a lot of comps I’ll think of. I grew up as a big fan of Complex. I couldn’t tell you one thing that’s like, ‘Oh, Complex does this.’ They kind of do a bunch of stuff that’s really cool that I’m really interested in. I don’t care if they vary, but it’s all kind of in the universe. And I think that’s what we’re doing with running, is kind of centralizing all of the cool things that we care about into one place with a general elevated type of appreciation for journalism, long-form, aesthetics, good audio, good context around what’s happening around every area of the sport. And I think getting some good interest and some good feedback that people really enjoy that type of stuff.

Are there any lessons that you’ve used from your running journey, or just running in general, toward helping build A Mile A Minute?

I think trajectory…. We all look at marathon builds as like, ‘I got to train for three months, I got to train for four months.’ And my whole thing is for every training cycle, I’m like, ‘Long game’, where people drastically overestimate what they can accomplish in three, four months, but underestimate what they can accomplish in three, four years. So there’s no rush to get something done and get it right and get it perfect. It’s a journey. I think about everything I thought I knew my first marathon build, didn’t really know much. But the second one, I learned and I grew. And I couldn’t predict that I would be this runner based on that first build. But now I’m five years in, and every time I learned more, made mistakes, learned from those mistakes. Without some of them, I wouldn’t be where I am.

And I think it’s the same thing with A Mile A Minute. You kind of feel some things out, you think people will like certain things, they don’t, then they like other things, you experiment with different types of segments. And all that type of stuff is part of the journey. Then along the way, people come in and kind of help pull you along. And I think that’s kind of the roadmap—think about what something could be in three years, four years, as opposed to what it can be in three months, four months.

Another thing I want to touch on is Black Distance NYC. I’m curious if you can talk about that in general, when it started to formulate, and making it a little bit more of a formal group very recently?

Yeah, couldn’t wait for you to ask me about that, kind of excited about it. And I know it seems new, and I think the only thing that’s new is that it’s an Instagram page, and maybe we have a title of what we’re calling it. But really, we’re a group of friends. We’ve been running together, probably two, some of us three years, kind of just organically. And I think that’s a New York story in itself….

And just being in the space, I got to a level where I have some big goals, and it’s important to have people who have those similar goals. There’s like a collective belief effect. I remember the first time I met Malcolm, one of the guys I run with, I think he had run a 1:18 half. And at the time I was close to that, but the fact that he did it, it was like, ‘Oh, I know someone who did it, so now this seems like a realistic goal for me to have.’ It just kind of made me work a little bit harder knowing that someone else had done it. And then from there, we would run together and we’d say, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we had a bunch of people who are just like us, Black runners who played around with the sport at different levels, ran in high school’.... Then as we kept running, we’d be like, ‘Oh, well this person’s running, let’s just invite them to a long run, let’s see if they want to show up.’ And it kind of just evolved from that.

I think over a year or two of running together, you’re like, ‘Hey, should we have a team?’ And we’re like, ‘Nah, that doesn’t make sense.’ We’ve gone through every variation of, ‘There’s already a team, there are too many teams, we don’t need another run club.’ And I think that’s actually our position, is we’re not a run team, we’re not a run club or crew, we’re a collective. If you want to come run with us, great, if you don’t, we’re still going to be here doing our thing. We’re Black runners, we’re chasing common goals. We’re trying to inspire other people to not even just get in the sport, to stay in the sport.

Because that’s what we’ve noticed, is you see people come and then the engagement kind of disappears, because they’re like, ‘Oh, I’ll do it for a year, I’ll do it for whatever.’ And this is a sport that rewards consistency. So you’re not gonna get anything out of it if you kind of play around, like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll just run one marathon and I’m gone.’ You got to commit to a long period of time to actually see anything. And if they see other people that do it, they’re more incentivized to be like, ‘All right, I’ll do this for three years, four years, because someone has showed me a roadmap to success.’

In terms of actually creating an Instagram for it, is it more so just trying to expand the reach and see if you can reach people on social media that you wouldn’t necessarily meet in person, or just anything that went into that as well?

For sure, expand the reach, expand the influence. So what happened was, let’s say there’s like four of us running consistently. And we all did a race up in Rockland in 2025, [Trials of Miles] Project 13.1. And then a bunch of guys that came up either messaged one of us on Instagram, ‘Oh hey, that was a great race, really inspiring,’ and then separately someone else would message me, ‘Oh, I’d love to’—and that was kind of like, ‘Oh, people see us already kind of as a group.’ Even though we’re just a bunch of friends, people are kind of putting that label on us…. So it was kind of just like, ‘Yeah, maybe we should make it a little official and let people know this is what we do.’ We’re very transparent, this is where we’re running, these are the kinds of workouts, these are the paces. There’s no formalized coaching, or leaders, or anything like that. It’s just if you want to come and tap in with us, come in, this is what we’re doing.

And I think sometimes you have to be intentionally what you don’t see and a little bit different. Because if you want to join a run club, there are plenty of run clubs that have membership and formalization, and all that kind of stuff. But if you want to just come and work hard and get on the track with some people that look like you and are about the grind, this is where we’re going to be at every Tuesday or every Saturday.

You’re someone who’s got several things going on at once, whether it be your own personal running, whether it be A Mile A Minute, whether it be family.

How have you learned over time to balance that energy in terms of being all in on all these things, but you can’t be all in on everything at once?

Yeah, that’s a great question, and I think it’s an important one. What I’ve been doing, especially over the last few months, is kind of just showing up as who I am. I think there was a point in my life where I was like, I’d work a traditional corporate 9-to-5, I’m this person during the day, and I’m this person as a runner, then I’m this person with my family, then I’m this person—and it could be really exhausting, because sometimes you’re trying to figure out which one is the truer version of yourself, right? Because they’re all part of your life.

And now I’m very much like, ‘Hey, all of these things, these are all things that I care about, and these are all things that I really like, and I’m going to spend time on them during the day.’ And once you present yourself like that to other people, people are a lot more accepting…. It’s really helpful to explain to people what you’re doing, and that kind of creates the balance. So there’s a time where I’m super locked in on my own running, and there’s a time to kind of take a step back and do some other things and go full force on something else.

I’m still learning, so I don’t really have the perfect answer. But the transparency, I think, is really kind of the key to even trying to obtain a level of balance.

On your individual running journey, are there any favorite memories or races that stand out that you’d like to touch on?

Yeah, breaking three hours in Chicago was good because I ran 2:52. So I think that was great because I didn’t break it—every other race I was trying to run 2:59, there was a level of fear. And then in Chicago, I kind of went in, was like, ‘No, I’m going to break three hours, let’s see how far we can go.’ So that was a level of confidence that I never experienced during a race before, which was freeing.

In terms of best memory, Project 13.1 last year I ran a 1:15, and that was a time that a few years ago, I probably would’ve said, ‘Probably not going to touch that.’ And that kind of just opened my eyes. I was like, ‘Oh, well what else could I do?’ It’s not necessarily about the time, it was more about, if I can do this hard thing for this long period of time, this now opens up a new realm of possibilities. So it brought me back into excitement around training, where I was like, ‘Oh, now I really want to go out and to see how good I could get.’ Because I didn’t think I could do this, so now I don’t really have those limitations on myself.

What makes the New York City running community special to you at a high level, or what’s your favorite part of the New York City running community as a whole?

It can’t be defined as one thing. In this community, you have a mix of people who are high-level D1 athletes competing to OTQ, or have OTQ’d, and some have run professionally. And then you have people who’ve never touched the sport before this year. And they’re all kind of occupying the same space in a way that’s really organic and really helpful and accessible, that maybe doesn’t happen in another place…. You have competitive races, you have pros come here to race, you have a 5k in every park almost every week. There are no limitations on accessibility that makes this place probably one of the more special places to run.

And I don’t know if people outside of New York consider New York a running city, but I do. I don’t know, because it’s not a lot of park space, not a lot of car-free space. But I think it’s a pretty good running city.

Any other topics that you wanted to touch on that we haven’t touched on so far, or just any closing thoughts?

I think the only thing I’ll say is that the culture, the community is always evolving in a way that some people may like, may not like. But I think everyone who runs in New York has to kind of just have a level of openness to be like, ‘Hey, running is so unique, it’s such an individual experience,’ so there can’t be any rules or blinders on it. The way you show up to running is different than this person. The way they want to do something is different. And I think sometimes we lose touch of that, because we’re like, ‘Oh, this is the way I did it,’ or, ‘This is the way a run club should look,’ or, ‘This is the way you should train for this thing.’

And running is a little bit different of a sport where it’s not like basketball or football, where the only goal is to win. Some people are chasing time, some people are chasing experience, some people are doing it for health and mental health, and fighting battles you can’t see. So we have to remember that it’s so unique, and can’t be defined.

John McCabe started running because he lost his fantasy football league.

He and his friends were kicking around ideas for their league’s punishment one night, and thought it’d be funny to make last place run a marathon. Ultimately John finished in the cellar, and so he signed up for the 2024 New York City Marathon through Team for Kids—the origins of “a bit that [he’s] now been committing to for three years.”

John says it started to become more than just about the punishment for him after he joined Almost Friday Run Club, where he met other runners that motivated him to lean further and further into the sport. He’s since run three total marathons, cutting nearly an hour off his debut time en route to a 3:52 PR in Jersey City last month, and is just getting started.

We spoke with John to discuss his initial reaction to realizing he’d have to run a marathon, his journey to breaking four hours, how he’s making his next running goals more experience-focused and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to start off with an intro of where you’re from, what brought you to New York and how you got into running?

Yeah, so I’m originally from the Boston suburbs, specifically Newton, Massachusetts. So when people think of the Newton hills of the Boston Marathon, that’s right where my parents live now, and that’s where I kind of grew up. So running was always kind of in my culture, whether I liked it or not…. But I moved to New York in 2021, I’ve been here ever since. And I got into running, I guess this was March 2024, because I lost a bet.

So the year prior, I got last place in my fantasy football league. And our league is 10 very average build guys, very average fitness level men. And one of us thought, one night, it’d be really funny to make the punishment running a marathon. And then I lost, and so I signed up for the New York City Marathon through Team for Kids. So I fundraised money, I trained from March until the race. And I accidentally committed to a bit that I’ve now been committing to for three years, and I love it.

I literally never thought I’d be a runner. I never thought running would be my preferred form of exercise. I never thought that I’d just have finished marathon number three. But to think that here we are all because we committed to a bit is pretty impressive.

Once you got last, what was your initial reaction in terms of realizing that you’re gonna have to do that?

So my initial reaction was like, ‘Holy shit, this is happening.’ Like, ‘Is this real? Am I really about to do this?’ And it is one of those things where I love my friends so much, the people in that fantasy football league have such a strong bond, that it does a really good job of just holding you innately accountable. And so I had a very small holy shit moment, and I’ve had plenty of them personally, but because I have such a great friendship with them, it’s sort of like a, ‘This is happening whether I like it or not, so we might as well just go all in with it.’

When you first started training for it, did you have any initial goals? Or was it just, ‘All right, let me get to a point where I can finish this to check off the punishment’?

I think once I kind of made it my own, I went at it the way I thought I would, which was, ‘Okay, I’m just gonna run a bunch of miles. I’m gonna run three times a week—like coffee cups, small, medium, large. We’ll do a small run, a medium run, a long run every week, and then make those gradually longer.’ I didn’t really have a plan, I just knew that by putting in miles, I thought I would do well. And then the longer you get into training, the more you’re like, ‘Well, I feel like my fitness level is X, so I feel like I could do Y in terms of a time.’

But I didn’t really introduce a time goal until later, and that was five hours. And then as you get into running, you get a little bit more delusional, and you’re like, ‘Well, what about 4:45, and what about 4:30.’ And so I started tiering my goals, which is something I still do now, where I have an A goal, a B goal and sometimes a C goal. Because one thing that I found to be pretty important about running even now is you always want to leave yourself room for being happy.

Throughout that training block, leading into the 2024 New York City Marathon, can you just talk through how your relationship with running evolved or changed? When did you realize that you might stick with it after and it was a little bit more than just a one-and-done thing?

I would say I definitely realized this was a much bigger thing than a bet when I started running with Almost Friday [Run Club]. I picked that up around the same time because I had seen some friends post about it on Instagram, and so I just showed up one day, and I just kept showing up every Thursday. And I do think run clubs, Almost Friday in particular, does a really good job of being extremely approachable and palatable for someone who hasn’t been before. And it’s because everyone is doing the same run, there’s no pace group, there’s a walk in the middle, it really has all the pieces of something that is just accessible.

So the more I went to that, and the more I would just have conversations with people and continue to show up, you just meet people and you like hanging out with those people, so you want to just keep hanging out with those people. And since we’re all running, it usually means a lot of us are training. And so it kind of has this snowball effect, it shifts from I’m running this race to I’m training with others, and them pushing themselves makes you want to push yourself in a rising tide will raise all ships respect. And so in that regard, joining Almost Friday really was the catalyst to tell me this was more than just a run, or this is more than just a bet, because the people kind of made the place.

Can you talk through your experience at the 2024 New York City Marathon in particular, how it compared to whether it be your goals or your expectations going into the race, etc.?

Yeah, so I actually made a conscious choice on the bus to the Staten Island athlete’s village that I wasn’t going to pull out my phone unless it was to text my parents—because my family was in town, they’re not from here obviously, so I want to let them know when they could see me. So that, off the bat, kind of set off this opportunity for me to spend four-and-a-half hours just living in the moment. And I couldn’t have asked for a better experience in that way.

I wasn’t focused on a time goal either. I ran 10-and-a-half-minute miles for 26 miles with two of my best friends from college. And when I talk about best days of my life, running the New York City Marathon for the first time is going to be up there forever. And so to not really have a time goal and to be like, ‘I just want to finish,’ has been really special. It was really special because it allowed me to just say, ‘Fuck it, we’re just gonna have the best day ever.’ Take in the crowds in Brooklyn, in Long Island City, in First Ave and Fifth Ave, and just kind of bask in this moment that is.

I think it’s an experience that every runner should have at least once, that I hope every runner has once. Because the more you get into running and you kind of think about times and racing and whatever, you’re not really as pressed on what’s happening all around you. And I think that was a really special experience for me.

Coming out of that race, what main goals on the running side did you set for yourself going into 2025, and can you just talk about your experience in chasing those goals last year?

So I didn’t really have any goals that were thrust upon me immediately. I knew I wanted to do New York again, so 9+1 probably made the most sense. But then also, me and my colleague at work just applied into the Chicago lottery as a joke, and that was right after the New York City Marathon. Then I got accepted and she didn’t. And so I kind of had this other race basically picked out for me, and I was like, ‘Well, this is a World Marathon Major I got on my first try, might as well train for it.’ And then you start to hear people being like, ‘Oh, it’s fast, it’s flat. If you’re going for a time goal, it’s a good place to do it.’ So that got the gears turning.

I ran a 4:43 [in New York], I was like, ‘I think if I commit to this, I could run four hours.’ So I set a goal, I was like, ‘I want to run a two-hour half, I want to run a four-hour marathon’.... And it set the groundwork for what has become my accountability metric, which is just posting about my runs on Instagram. I wear a lot on my sleeve to the point where everyone just kind of knows what I’m gunning for. I want to publicize it. I want to put it out in the world, because it holds me accountable. I like to think that it’s a journey that no one takes alone. Running can be a very solitary sport at times. I heard Jordan Litz, who used to be on Broadway, talk about this—it’s a very solitary sport to the point where sometimes you have to be okay with doing it alone. But I don’t think it has to be done alone. And so by posting all this stuff on Instagram about the runs I go on, or what I’m training for, or my goals, it kind of holds me accountable to work that much harder.

And so I then hit the two-hour half in the United Half the following March, which was great. And then in Chicago I ran a 4:16…. That was a moment where I was annoyed, but then in retrospect it kind of hit me that that’s why I enjoy running in the first place. I enjoy it now because it’s tangible. I enjoy it now because whether you are John Korir or Sebastian Sawe, or if you’re John McCabe, your PR is your PR, and pushing yourself is pushing yourself, whether you’re doing it at a 12-minute pace or a four-minute pace. And so in that respect, I was like, ‘It’s cool to say year-over-year I knocked 26 minutes off a marathon time,’ and this time I trained and I didn’t lose a bet, and I wanted to do this. And so it’s a very tangible way to measure progress.

To bring that full circle to how things are going this year, [Jersey City] I just ran 3:52, which is another 24-minute PR. And ran under four [hours], which I was like, ‘Holy smokes, two years of my life I’ve been training for this.’ It’s been great, I always knew I would get there. But those goals I set after running New York have set the tone for the last two years. And I would say, in the last two years, I’ve continued to train for them, but then also just keep building.

Can you talk through what that race experience [in Jersey City] was like, and what it meant to finally hit that sub-four goal you’ve been going for?

Yeah, it was a very interesting day, because I think I only got like four hours of sleep the night before. It was my first non-Major Marathon—I think in a way that’s a good thing, because it allows you to kind of get back to the sport. New York and Chicago, I think you lose kind of the run aspect of it in the spectacle of the marathon. Which is great in its own right, but being able to come back to prioritizing the running of a race felt really good…. And this race couldn’t have been any better. It couldn’t have gone any better. I think I held a pretty consistent pace for about 23 miles, trailed off slightly the last three….

It’s a great running race. I don’t mean to come back to this idea of a Major versus a more local race—I mean, it was big, but it wasn’t like a New York, where there’s a time marker every mile, you’re hoping your family made it through five rows of people on First Ave to get up to the barricade….

So I mean, no notes on the race. I can’t really tell you specific landmarks I saw, but it was just a great race for me to prioritize the things I want to prioritize.

You set those goals of sub two-hour half and sub four-hour marathon. Now that you’ve accomplished that, how do you think about goals in terms of what’s next?

It’s funny, because I’ve been thinking about that a lot as well. Because when you make something this big of a deal for two years, it’s like, well what now? And I think easy way to go is you just pick like 3:45, 1:30, I don’t know. But I think for me now, it’s not necessarily time-focused as much as it is experience and memory-focused. I’m running New York again this year, and obviously I want to run better. I’m probably gonna run it better, no big deal. But my goal with New York is to have fun with the training process…. I was doing these workouts [training for Jersey City] that I was like, ‘I don’t really want to be doing this,’ and those moments are never fun. But it’s a change that I signified, where I was like, ‘I want to build a training plan that allows me to love running, just enjoy going for a 10-mile run.’ And so it might not be as many workouts, it might be more easy runs, it might be whatever….

I’m planning on running the Disney Marathon in January, I’m running that with my dad. So that’s going to be the first race that I run with my dad, and I’m just really excited to enjoy that with him. And so the focus is not necessarily time as much as it is time spent with the people in the moment, so my friends in New York City, or my family, or running Disney with my dad. So it’s been a really interesting shift for me, and one that I’m kind of still in the crux of now, but it’s I would say a much more valuable shift.

Any major lessons that running has taught you, or just ways that running has helped in other areas of your life?

I’ll give you two answers. One lesson I’ve learned about running is that it’s not that serious, it’s just running. We live in an era today where there are so many creators and so many companies that focus on elite and running the best race and the fastest race.

It’s like, for me, running is just running. And what I mean by that is the same way that Sebastian Sawe can run a 1:59:30, I can go for a 10-mile run hungover with my best friends on a Saturday after six hours of sleep. And I’m going to post about it the same way that Adidas makes a post about—that might be a terrible example, maybe changed the company. But the same way Gatorade might make a post about the marathon, I’m still gonna make a post about my 10-mile hangover run. Because at the end of the day, the miles are the miles. But what you do with them, and the people that you spend them with, I think that that is that much more meaningful. So I would say the lesson has always been, and I try to kind of practice this, but running shouldn’t ever be that serious….

I think the more you do something, the more confident you get at it. I think it’s sick that I’m able to go run 16 miles before work on a Thursday and then walk into the office and no one can hurt me. I think being a runner teaches you a lot about discipline, it teaches you a lot about work ethic. And I think it’s helped me realize that the long game’s as important as what you do between nine and five. What you do between January and December matters just as much as what you do between nine and five. And so it’s helped me kind of reprioritize and focus a little bit more as someone whose brain is in 26,000 different places at any given time.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

No, I don’t think so…. I just want to re-emphasize that running should never be serious. I think I like to practice that, and I like to think that that’s why I’m in the position I’m in right now. And so we just keep doing that.

Euphelia Xiang initially viewed running as a means to an end.

The Vancouver native placed at Provincials and made it to Nationals while competing in middle and high school, but quickly burned out and quit. Even after re-finding running post-college to help alleviate work stress, she always focused on wanting to finish the run. Then, an accident during the summer of 2024 left her unable to walk for several months and run for nearly a year, and after a long rehab process she returned to running with a different mindset.

Euphelia says she learned to treasure any physical activity and enjoy the discomfort. She’s also leaned further into the community side of the sport, serving as an ambassador for the Toronto Marathon—her first-ever marathon last spring—while beginning to explore all the clubs, events and racing formats the NYC community has to offer.

In the end she still has competitive ambitions, including running a sub-three marathon. But her main goal now is to detach from results and just consistently show up day after day, something she applies to all other areas of her life as well.

We spoke with Euphelia to discuss how her relationship with running has changed over time, the recovery process from her accident, the impact her mom’s running journey has had on her own and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to give an intro of yourself?

My name’s Euphelia, I originally grew up in Vancouver, Canada, so I spent around 16 years there. I competed pretty well in the Provincials when I was in middle and high school, in middle distance mostly, so three kilometers to five kilometers at that point. And I was consistently top 10, top five at Provincials, and made it to Nationals. But I actually quit pretty soon after the first year of high school because of burnout. There were very high expectations of me at my school, so I stepped away from running. Went to college at the University of Toronto, I studied economics and architecture, ended up working in finance in Toronto for two years before moving here to New York City. So I’ve been in New York on and off for around two and a half years now.

I started picking up running again actually during work, because working in finance here is quite high pressure. And I had a quarter-life crisis where I thought, ‘Oh, is this what I wanted to do with my life?’ So I would go on these no music, solo, completely freestyle runs, where I’d just think about that….

And then in 2024 I had a pretty major life incident where I was involved in an accident. So my legs were entirely bruised, quite scary, very swollen. I wasn’t able to walk for like three months and run for like a year, basically. So this very long rehab process really made me treasure any physical activity. And that wasn’t something I had in mind before. If you think about it, road running isn’t necessarily the most exciting sport. You just go out there and you just move your feet, right? It’s about day-by-day effort, not a very exciting, super high frequency thing. But after that incident it really made me reflect and treasure the people and the community and the not just running aspect of it, and the people who show up for me and my body that showed up for me.

So after that, I’ve been really trying to do more competitions and actually treat running as something sacred to me, rather than just something that I do to clear out my mind. Now I’ve run three marathons, I just did Boston. I recently joined a new team, Dashing Whippets, and everybody’s super inclusive, they’re all super involved in the New York community. And that’s why I wanted to get back into it.

You talked about it a little bit there, when you first got into running pre-2024 it was just on your own, as a mental clear your headspace thing, and no races, no goals beyond that…. Anything you want to expand on of what that initial running phase looked like, versus now in your running journey?

Yeah, that’s actually a super great question, because I think there’s a distinct difference there. Pre-2024 it was mostly optimizing for health and wellness, right? If you think about it, for the average person running a marathon all the time is probably not that healthy compared to just running 10ks every day. So I would probably do that more pre-2024, and also focusing more on running as a means to an end. I would always want to finish, that was my mentality. I would always only look at the finish line.

But now I enjoy the process a lot more. I actually enjoy sitting in discomfort through my long runs, and I don’t really care about finishing anymore. And now it’s definitely less about optimizing for health and wellness. I still do, but it’s more about showing up consistently for myself.

I’m curious if you can talk about that initial ramp-up in running when you got back into it last year? It seems like you ramped up at least relatively quickly compared to a lot of people, in terms of doing a couple marathons [in that first year].

So that’s also a great question, because I didn’t really optimize for running. I optimized for recovery. And I think that’s what a lot of people who got injured should do. You should optimize for being a hybrid athlete and just general recovery, rather than one specific thing. So I did a lot of sauna, hot tub, yoga, pilates, all these unquantifiable things that brought me a lot of pleasure. Before I used to think when you go on ClassPass and do these pilates classes, you feel good at the end of the class, but you also feel like you didn’t—it’s not quantifiable, right? It’s like, I do 10 years of yoga, and then I can’t measure how good I’ve gotten after those 100 classes that I’ve done, or 1,000 classes I’ve done.

But in running, there’s a clear time that you can quantify. So I didn’t really like that aspect of the other things, like the ClassPasses, the Barry’s, the solidcore things I was doing. But I really appreciate that I did it, because I think it was all a part of the holistic training that brought me back up. So I did that for approximately a year, and then started running. And then, to my surprise, the running actually recovered a lot faster because I didn’t immediately put strain on my legs. So I think that helped. I didn’t plan for it, but that helped.

What were those goals when it comes to races and running in general when you got back into it early last year, and how have they evolved in the year-plus since?

Okay, awesome. Great question. My first marathon was May 4, 2025 [at the Toronto Marathon], so fairly soon. And why I signed up for that one was actually because it was my birthday. I had no thoughts of racing it. I just wanted to finish…only because I thought it’d be cool to run a marathon on my birthday. And then I ended up doing super well, think I almost got a BQ from that one. And that’s when I discovered, ‘Oh, I can actually do this thing,’ probably just from my running background as a kid. So I ended up signing up for another one, and that’s when I BQ’d for Boston, just later on in 2025.

I think for me, I didn’t have a conventional race mentality in the beginning. It was more like, ‘Let me try this—and surprisingly did well—and then let me consistently progress over time.’ And now that I’ve run three marathons, I kind of have a more structured plan and goal, and ultimately I know I can do a lot better, pushing for the more competitive ranges. And as I’ve said, I think detaching from daily performance and just focusing on showing up, I think that matters more than a single run or result. Because I want to run for a really, really long time. I want to run until I die, basically, right? When I was a runner before in my competitive years, I did not think like that. So that’s why the burnout was pretty bad.

For example, I didn’t actually hit my goal at Boston. It was my first Boston, and I don’t think I knew how to—a lot of things went wrong, actually. I don’t think I knew how to run it. My first two marathons were very flat, Boston’s definitely not flat. But that’s okay, because we try again next year, right?

Anything else you want to touch on in terms of long-term goals when it comes to running…. In terms of tangible goals, or even just softer goals as well?

So I have two Majors coming up. I’m going to Sydney this year, and then running Chicago as well.

I’m actually an ambassador for the Toronto Marathon, which is the very first marathon that I ran…. So that was something that I didn’t expect, just being more involved in the community and being an ambassador for women in general, was really meaningful to me. I think I want to try for sub-three eventually, like 2:50-ish. And I also want to explore more new things—for example halves, right? So I’m running the RBC Half on May 16. And then I’m doing the Bandit Grand Prix…. I want to do more relays, I want to do more teams. I know New York City has a bunch of running events that are extremely community-based, so I want to do more of that….

Even for the Toronto Marathon Ambassador [Program], I had girls hit me up and ask me, ‘Oh, how was your experience? I’ve never run a marathon before.’ And I feel like, for me, like an ordinary girl—yeah, I had some running background, but online I’m just an ordinary girl who can do a marathon. I think a lot of women out there, or a lot of people, kids out there, when they see someone like a D1 athlete running a marathon, they just assume, ‘I can’t be one of them, right? They have all this experience.’ But when they see me, it’s like, ‘Okay, this ordinary girl—she can do it, then I can.’ I think that’s more meaningful and impactful to them than seeing someone with a cool background doing it. So I really wanted to continue doing that, and that’s why I’m here.

What are lessons you’ve learned from running, or just ways that running has helped in other areas of your life?

Running in general has taught me better stress management. I’m actually sharper mentally as well. Again, sitting with discomfort for a really long time and just actually enjoying it, not just in running, but it translates to work. Initially, I picked it up to manage work stress, and now I actually don’t have that anymore.

I do a lot of solo runs, I also do runs with groups, and I hear other people’s stories of why they started, and it’s always super inspiring. And whether it’s for health or whether it’s for work problems—you could be a CEO, you could be a hedge fund manager, you could be an artist, it brings everyone together, and it brings everyone to the same boat. It’s kind of like a blind dinner…. That aspect I really enjoy, just genuinely getting to know this individual as a person.

I think I realized that everyone starts—you know how these signs at marathons are like, ‘Oh, what are you running for?’ These super inspirational things, and everyone’s running away from some demons, right? So maybe initially, that’s the activation energy for you to start running, but then you end up actually falling in love with it. And then now you run for fun, like you genuinely just love the discomfort, and you make it comfortable for you. And then again, you never know what these demons people have are, but you’re all running together away from it.

And the most important takeaway for me through my life’s journey with running is just being able to detach from result. I think showing up consistently matters way more than just a single race or a single result. And looking back at the girls from my previous competitive team who did well now, they weren’t the fastest, but they consistently showed up and they kept running for a very long time. And I work in investing, it’s kind of similar, because it’s all about just putting one foot in front of the other. You don’t need to be super talented, but you just need to do it day by day, and that’s how you get good.

Anything that I didn’t specifically ask about that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

My mother, she’s done like 50 marathons, and then done Boston five times, and is doing the UTMB and all these Ironman, stuff like that. And she only started running when she was 55. And now she’s basically a six-star finisher. So I look at her, and I’m like, ‘Wow, I want to be like that too.’ And she doesn’t really push for time or anything, but ever since she started, it’s just about consistency and doing it day by day. So that’s been a huge motivator for me as well….

My mother and I, we’ve run through the major life events. Whether it’s grandparents passing away, or change of jobs, or change of cities, and breakups—all these major things, and you can always look toward running as your rock. So it might be the same with religion, but for me it’s running. Something like this happens, I just go out for a run, and then you feel so much better afterwards.

J Solle had always dreamed of living in New York City.

The Bay Area native went to college in Boston and stayed for several years after, but yearned for a more expansive and diverse queer community. So in 2021 they made the move to New York, and not knowing many people in the city, the first thing they did was join the Front Runners.

Quickly, running evolved into more than just the side hobby it was for J while in Boston. They went from never believing they could run a marathon to now having completed their ninth, and became increasingly involved in the Front Runners, serving on its board of directors for two years before taking on the role of race director for the Pride Run in late 2023.

J says there’s no way they could have predicted the behind-the-scenes work that goes into that role, but that it’s ‘so worth it’ once you pull it off. And it goes ‘hand-in-hand’ with the work they do to help educate other race directors and advocate for gender non-conforming runners in races outside the Pride Run, from local presentations to the United Nations.

We spoke with J to discuss how the Front Runners community made them fall in love with running, the history and legacy of the Pride Run, the importance of non-binary categories at races and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you can start off with an intro of yourself, where you’re originally from, where you’ve lived, and then what motivated your eventual move to New York City?

Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in the Bay Area, and kind of ran here and there in high school. I actually threw shot put and discus on my high school track and field team because it was a no-cut sport and I needed to get a sport credit. I was the team captain for throws because I was the only person on the team that showed up every day. I was dramatically the worst person on the team, but I always loved spectating the track events and the running events.

And then moved to college in Boston, and lived in Boston for a number of years after that, and always loved running, especially after I graduated. I ran my first half marathon, which was the BAA Half in Boston, and I loved it. It was always just kind of a hobby and extracurricular, and definitely something during the COVID pandemic and the lockdown that I did a lot more of, because that was the activity that we could do. And at the time I was working in a hospital in Boston, so sometimes still going into the office, and running was my activity that got me out of the hospital and moving.

And at the same time, I kind of had always had this dream of moving to New York City. Boston’s queer community is not huge and it’s not super diverse, and so I wanted to make the move to New York, kind of not knowing what was ahead of me. I was able to do it in April of 2021, so actually just five years ago. And coming to New York knowing nobody really, the first thing I did was join the Front Runners. And I’m sure we’ll talk about it, but that really opened up all of these different doors of running in so many ways. My friends, my life here, my partner, everything about my time in New York City has really been defined around Front Runners, and my experience in that community.

You’ve talked about it in a few podcasts as well, of how you were involved in the Boston racing scene, but New York is really where you fell in love with the sport and started diving deeper into it.

So anything else you want to touch on there, of how moving to New York and the Front Runners community specifically made you fall in love with the sport?

In Boston, I did the BAA 5k, the 10k, the half marathon, always did those with some friends, and it was a lot of fun. So there are a couple of things that all happened at once when I moved to New York.

One of them was the running boom, and the running club boom was just starting to happen as life was coming back that spring, because people were getting their COVID vaccinations. The activity that everyone gravitated to was running clubs. And so Front Runners went through this boom where it wasn’t just me or a couple people showing up to the club, new and looking for friendships. I mean at that point, it was hundreds of people. In that year, that was the first time that the club ever surpassed 1,000 dues paying members. And so yeah, there was this boom, and everybody was looking for friendship. So immediately people were already having like-minded interests when you show up to a run club, and then wanting to spend time and do things outside of the run club. And so it just became this really tight-knit community.

A couple things like I mentioned at the same time—one, my kind of running mentor at the time, the president of Front Runners, was Gilbert Gaona, and he saw me and took me under his wing in Front Runners. And he was like, ‘You’re going to volunteer, you should join the board, you should do all of these things.’ He inspired me to run for the board later that year of Front Runners. And he got me to sign up for the Pride Run, along with a couple other folks in the club who were helping push people to do the Pride Run. And that was my first race in New York City, and it was the first race back too after the pandemic, was the June 2021 Pride Run.

Now at the same time—like I said multiple things—June 2021, that Pride Run, was also the first ever race that New York Road Runners offered a non-binary category in their races. So they debuted it with that Pride Run, and started expanding it. And at the time, I had kind of questioned my gender identity, but didn’t feel like I had a good, solid grounding yet, or understanding of myself or others, how it all fit together. And seeing a number of Front Runners running in the non-binary category, loud and proud, also kind of inspired me to think and explore my own gender. And I had this gender journey, and one of those people that I was inspired by, Jake Caswell, ended up becoming my long-term partner. So everything kind of all happened at once there.

You were on the board for [Front Runners] for a couple years, anything you want to touch on there, but also what motivated you to then take that next step of stepping down from the board and motivating your time and energy toward being the race director for the Pride Run?

Yeah, so I did love being on the board. Front Runners is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and so the board of directors, volunteer board, really helps operate the club on a day-to-day basis. It’s a great opportunity for folks like myself who want to give back to something outside of their day jobs, or be part of something bigger than themselves, to get involved in…. And one of the things that I made as one of my priorities was helping expand the community of gender non-conforming runners that were part of Front Runners and could be part of our racing team.

And after two years of being on the board—typically people do one to two years on the board at Front Runners, they don’t typically do a third—the person who had been the Pride Run director previously, David Ernst, who is now on the board, was stepping down. And it was just this perfect transition of going from operating the club to operating one very involved—a lot of work, but one specific piece of work. And it’s been such a great fit for me to be able to do that. It kind of goes hand-in-hand too with some of the work I’ve been doing outside of the Pride Run, of helping educate and advocate for gender non-conforming runners in races as well. I think it fits together really well with that race director role.

Anything else you want to touch on in terms of how Front Runners has impacted your running journey, and how it’s compared to your expectations versus when you first joined them and moved to New York?

I never thought I was going to be able to run a marathon. For years I was like, ‘Half marathon, that’s my max out.’ Here I am just having completed my ninth marathon since 2022.

I think there were over 250 Front Runners that finished the [NYC] Marathon last year. There’s this huge contingent of Front Runners that do these races. And so when I came to the club, and I spectated and cheered at the marathon in 2021, and I saw all of my friends, and Gilbert who I mentioned, all racing the marathon, I was just so inspired. I was like, ‘I have to do this. I have to find a way to do this. Because I want to be part of this. I want to train with these people.’ So just the sheer number of people that do it and want to do it and want to be part of it from the club, I think inspires other people to want to be part of it.

And the way I still think about it is I want anyone to be able to move to New York City knowing no one, and show up at Front Runners and make friends. I still see people every week at the club that were there in 2021 when I joined, I still see people that were founding members in the 80s, and I see people every single week that are coming for their first time. And I know you’ve had a lot of folks on to talk about run clubs, and I’m sure you’ve covered what it’s like to come new to a run club—scary. But when people feel like they fit in, they’re going to want to come back and find that community. And I think that’s what we keep doing in Front Runners, whether it’s new people every year, the way that we do things. I think that’s a really great thing about the club.

You’ve been an advocate for non-binary categories in races in many different forums. You’ve talked about it a lot before, but for the sake of having it here, I’m curious if you can talk about why that’s so important to you?

And more specifically, if you want to talk about the first time you ran within a non-binary category and why that experience was so important and special to you as well?

Yeah, so the first non-binary category I ran in was the 2022 Brooklyn Half Marathon that New York Road Runners puts on. And I mean, I remember crossing—well, I remember a lot of anxiety about it. But I remember crossing the finish line and looking at my phone, seeing the X next to my name, and I was just so overcome with emotion of like, where else do you see this tangible, visual representation of gender in your life? And it was so affirming to me, to have the opportunity to participate in this way that felt so right for me. And I remember, there’s an amazing New York Road Runners staff member, she caught me at the finish line, and I was just crying on her, because I was so, relieved I think is the word that I would want to use there.

And so it kind of has blossomed into this opportunity for me that I have loved to go and take this message outside of all the great work that’s happened in New York, and try to help races that want to do the right thing, help them figure out what infrastructure and policies and communications and everything that they need to set up in order to do this. Across some of the races I’ve worked with in Canada, in the U.S., I have gotten a number of messages from people that have then run those races and said, ‘Thank you for doing this, thank you for doing that. It made my experience so affirming, and it helps me know that I was coming to a safe place to run as myself.’

And also, when educating race staff or race management about this, I often use my own personal story and tell that story about me crossing the finish line, because it humanizes the element of it. And it helps us also remember that even if this only benefited one person—which it doesn’t, it benefits many people—even if it’s only made one person’s race experience better, it’s worth it to do it. So when I’m giving a presentation, or a webinar or a learning session, I always lead with that story, because it helps people really hone in on, ‘Wow, this is really a tangible thing that we could do to make someone feel like they’re welcome with us.’

The 2022 New York City Marathon was the first Major Marathon that had a non-binary category [with prize money]…. There’s obviously been rapid expansion of that since.

What are the factors that you think have allowed for that rapid expansion in the years since, and how do you continue that momentum for all races, especially smaller races, into the future as well?

Yeah, it’s a great question. So 2021 was the first New York City Marathon with a non-binary category, ’22 was the first year there was prize money. And Jake, my now-partner, won that race. And I was like, ‘Wow, I really like this person,’ and then we started dating a month later. So fun fact about that.

You’re right, there are now hundreds of races that have the non-binary category. But there are probably thousands that don’t, and especially these small hometown races where there’s a lot of opportunity for that to be really impactful. And I think there are a couple things here. One, a lot of race directors want to do this. They want to set this up to make their race more inclusive, but they don’t always know how. And so I think that’s a lot of what I’ve done—and it’s not just me trying to do this, there are a number of folks in the community trying to do this. My way of doing it is just trying to hit the lowest hanging fruit items that provide the biggest impact for people in the races. And so we always talk about social media, communications, policies. And oftentimes I’ll go to a race director and be like, ‘Here are five very, very easy things that you can do to make your race that already has a non-binary category more welcoming.’

Races that don’t have it I think are seeing other races that do have it, and then have questions about, ‘What does it take to do this?’ And the answer is it’s not super hard, it just takes a little bit of upfront work to do it. I’d hoped we were moving in the right direction. I think right now, there’s a lot of maybe confusion or apprehension in different places of the U.S. about what the right thing is to do here. But a lot of the races I work with are pushing ahead and making their races even more inclusive.

Going back to your role as race director for the Pride Run…. What’s been surprising, different, or more challenging than expected compared to when you first entered into that role?

So yeah, this is a year-long job. I think a lot of people think it’s like, ‘Well, May, June, you’re really busy.’ But the reality is, it is something that starts the day after the next Pride Run ends. New York Road Runners is our partner for this race, and they are an incredible partner in helping us put it on. Front Runners has the opportunity, as a charity race, to raise money for this, and that’s through charity bibs, and that’s through corporate sponsorships and partnerships. And so a lot of what I do, and the other volunteers that help us with this, is around creating those opportunities for fundraising. I spend a lot of time working with our amazing corporate sponsors and partners who want to come to the race and show that their brands are part of the running community and supporting the LGBTQ+ community, and want to do it in a way that makes sense and also supports our running club and the Pride Run.

So I had no way for me to have estimated how much work that was, but it’s so worth it when you can pull it off, and it all makes sense. And then at the end of the day, the race not only underwrites all the activities that our club does on a year-long basis, but we also make a very large donation to a beneficiary of our club’s choice each year that serves LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. And so it’s not just helping our own community, but it’s helping our whole New York City community.

What does it mean to be the race director for such a historic race…but also balancing that history with pushing the race forward, especially in such an important time period for the LGBTQ+ community?

Yeah, as I’m sure you saw, the race started in 1982 with just about 400 people. And I often think about the bravery that it would take to run a Pride Run and to organize a Pride Run in 1982, and I’m so, so inspired by all of that. We still have a couple members of the club who ran that inaugural Pride Run who run every year, and to be able to continue the legacy of that incredible work, I feel very fortunate to do that.

And when you run the Pride Run, a lot of people say, ‘It feels different than a normal four-mile race that you might have on any given Saturday or Sunday in New York,’ because the spirit of the race is so much about belonging and inclusion. And I think that the race also brings out a lot of people who aren’t the regular runners that are doing the 9+1. Of course, they’re all there, but it brings out a lot of families and people who want their kids to participate and be part of the inclusivity movement. So we see a lot of really great activism and learning and growth that happens in this race, and that activism and growth is always changing and growing.

So this year, we changed the name, and it might seem like a small change, but the LGBT Pride run became the LGBTQ+ Pride Run, and slightly adopted a different logo and brand for the race that continues to push us forward. And this year, our theme is all about unity, unity and community, and the miles that we stride together in unity are so important for all of us right now in this time. When especially, not just LGBTQ+ people, but our trans and non-binary, gender non-conforming members of the community are especially under attack, and especially in the BIPOC LGBTQ+ community there as well.

We are all working together, we are all as one, and I think that’s the entire spirit of what we’re doing this year. So it’s an honor for me to get to carry that on.

In your individual running journey you’ve been working with a coach for a while. I’m curious if you can talk through the benefits that you’ve seen from working with a coach, and how that’s motivated you to want to coach others as well?

Yeah, okay shout out Ian, shout out Hodge Endurance. So I’ve been working with my coach now for I think three years. He’s also one of my best friends, he’s a now-former Front Runners member living in Washington, D.C.

I think a lot of people like to have a coach because they don’t want to think through their workouts, or they want someone else to help kind of guide their path. And not only does he do that, but he’s also one of my biggest cheerleaders in helping me grow and find my own strength in the sport and my own passion and courage to do things. I did workouts this block that I don’t think I ever thought I could have had that kind of athleticism. And he just pushes me every time to do it….

I would not go so far to call myself a coach in the way that he is, but it is true that I have helped coach a couple of my friends, helped give them some structure and guidance and create workouts for them, in a way that has also helped me…. It’s just really fun to help people find their own passion and their courage, the way that Ian has helped me find mine.

You mentioned earlier that you never thought you would run a marathon, you obviously did that and expanded from there.

After you decided, ‘Okay, I want to do a marathon,’ what were those initial goals after that, and how have the goals evolved in the years since, as you’ve gotten faster, more committed to the sport, etc.?

I’m definitely that type of person that latches on to something and wants to do really well at it, or figure out what my full capacity to succeed at it is. When Ian first started working with me, he was like, ‘You have the capacity to do really well, you just don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing,’ which was so true. And he thinks that—and I think this too, that I can get to the point where I am running a sub-2:50 marathon, which would be amazing. I would love that.

But at the end of the day, I just want to keep getting better. And I don’t think that that always necessarily means the time that’s on the clock, because that time doesn’t take into account everything that you’re dealing with in a particular race. Like leading up to Boston, I had a little injury two weeks beforehand, and then I had a stomach bug the weekend of Boston, and it’s like I knew that I wasn’t going to be going out and having that PR race. But the time on the clock doesn’t tell the whole story of your journey to get there and how you feel. So I just want to keep doing it and keep feeling better and better and having a great time at it.

Do you have any favorite races or memories that stand out over the years?

I mean, every New York City [Marathon] is such an electric moment, because all of your people are out there either running on the course with you or cheering for you. And there’s nothing like that electric, electric moment. In Boston, the first time I did it, having gone to college and then lived there, and my first year of college in Boston was the year of the marathon bombing—and so running then the first time, it’s always a very special experience.

I do think, though, that one of my favorite moments is Jake, my partner, running my PR race with me in 2024 at Chicago. So Jake was starting in the sub-elite corral, and I was starting in Corral A, and they wouldn’t let Jake move back to start with me. So Jake ran to the first mile marker, pulled off, waited to the side for me to come, and then ran the rest of the race with me, paced me to my PR. And there are some incredible photos of us hugging at the finish line. Whenever we can run together, I feel so grateful for that moment, and I love doing that with my partner. So, great moment.

Any topics that we haven’t covered that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

I think closing thoughts are just about community and unity. I think if you’re seeing this, come to a run, come to one of the Front Runners runs, you don’t have to be part of the LGBTQ+ community to join us. Run the Pride Run. There are charity bibs that are still available. Just take part in the community and expand the horizon.

If it’s a Front Runner reading this, go to another club. Like, try it. I think there’s a lot to be gained from just being part of the community here.

In the eighth grade, Sean Grossman got cut during baseball tryouts. He now calls that one of the biggest blessings of his life.

From there, Sean dove fully into running, competing all throughout high school out on Long Island before walking on at the University of Miami. He gradually built up his training in South Florida, eventually setting several school records and scoring at ACCs as a senior, and left the Hurricanes still relatively eager to see what potential he had post-grad while living in New York.

The Olympic Marathon Trials weren’t initially on Sean’s radar. But after he ran a 2:23 at the 2021 Boston Marathon—placing second in the open field—it quickly became the target.

His OTQ dream initially began with heartbreak, as he finished less than a minute short at the 2022 California International Marathon and battled a sickness the week of the same race the following year. Sean’s faith didn’t waver, however, even after the standard dropped to 2:16 entering the 2028 qualifying window. And at the McKirdy Micro Marathon in March, everything came together for what he says was the ‘pinnacle’ of his running career thus far.

We spoke with Sean to discuss what it meant to finally accomplish his OTQ dream, joining Brooklyn Track Club, lining up behind Eliud Kipchoge as part of the New York City Marathon professional field last fall and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to give an intro of where you’re originally from and your earliest memories running?

Yeah, definitely. So I grew up on Long Island my entire life, in Suffolk County like an hour out of the city. Grew up playing every single sport under the sun outside of running, and then in middle school was the first time I really got introduced into running. I honestly can’t remember why, but decided to join the cross country team. Was still playing baseball, that was my one sport I was still partaking in. So did cross country, was an okay runner, I think I remember maybe running like 6:50 for the mile on a grass course. Continued baseball for a couple years, so didn’t do track in seventh grade. And eighth grade came back, did cross country, and then eighth grade baseball tryouts didn’t make the team, and was probably the biggest blessing I’ve had. Went fully into running, and haven’t looked back since.

So ran all throughout high school, all three seasons out on Long Island. Super competitive county, had a lot of really good runners come out of there for my graduating class. Just kind of steadily improved throughout those four years, went to University of Miami down in Florida as a preferred walk-on. Miami is not really known for its distance capabilities, big powerhouse in sprints and field events. So got there, was kind of just, ‘Let’s try and turn this thing around.’ We were in the ACC, which is a really, really strong distance conference, so definitely just got my butt whooped around for most of my time there. Senior year finally became a little bit relevant, was able to score at my outdoor conference meet in the 10k, came in eighth place, and acted like it was the biggest thing in the world…. That’s kind of like the origin pre-running in the New York City running community, that first 10 years of running.

Was that always the plan to walk on at Miami, or was that a decision you made after attending there? And while you were there you mentioned you placed at ACCs, you set several school records as well—how did your college career pan out compared to your expectations when you first joined the team?

So in high school, I thought about the prospect of running in college, but it definitely wasn’t like I need to run in college. I remember getting a few letters here and there from some Division III schools my junior year, but I was more focused on what am I doing academically. It was kind of like, [running] would be a nice addition to my college experience.

I decided I wanted to major in architectural engineering, which not a lot of schools had. So it ended up coming down to Miami and Penn State. Visited Miami, it was an absolute paradise of a campus. And for me, that was kind of it, just had to let my parents allow me to go way away from home and down to South Florida. If I went to Penn State, I’m not sure if I would’ve been able to get on to that team, we’ll never know.

So went to Miami, really small distance program. We had anywhere from probably eight to 12 guys on the cross country / distance track roster while I was there. By sophomore year, I’d become the top guy on the team. Had some great training partners, great friends. I had a coach that was very receptive to what I had done as my training in high school, which was for the most part 30 to 35 miles a week, I wasn’t doing much.

A lot of DI programs push you straight into 80 miles a week and you get hurt. And I really, every year, kind of just added steadily until senior year, I was maybe running 75 miles a week. So it was a nice gradual approach where I never had any injuries, I was never out, I never had to redshirt. So that was really, really great for me, and also just didn’t burn me out of the sport. For the most part, with a little exception right after college, I was pretty eager still to see what I was capable of post-collegiately.

You touched on it a little bit in your answer there, but what motivated you to keep running and training competitively post-grad?

Yeah, so I graduated May 2018, and then I had a couple months where I didn’t run. I kind of thought I was over it. And I specifically remember one day going to the gym with my buddy to just try and see what a normal workout is at a gym, of I’m not doing weird band exercises or something like that, that every distance runner is doing. And I spent an hour there and hated it, and the next day went for a run. I was just like, ‘This isn’t for me. I need to just stay fit by running.’ And that was really it. Probably a week later, I signed up for a random 5k—I was living at home at the time, so in my parents’ town. And then right after that, October is the Staten Island Half, signed up for that and haven’t really looked back since.

So definitely had a brief moment where I wasn’t too motivated. But like I said, I never really felt burned out in college…which was crucial to me still wanting to get after it. And then I lived at home for about a year, so besides running a few races, I didn’t really discover the New York City running community until I moved into the city, which was right around summer of 2019. And then shortly after I joined Brooklyn Track Club, which has obviously been a crucial, crucial puzzle piece to me still being involved and still being so tight into the New York City community.

It sounds like when you first got into [running post-grad], it was more the avenue of staying in shape. When did that really competitive fire come into your post-grad running journey, in terms of something like going for an OTQ at some point?

Yeah, so the OTQ idea definitely took some time. The competitive factor of it I think was days after I started running again, because I’ve always been someone that—I definitely love running, you have to to do it this much, but I definitely love competing way more. So to me, running doesn’t exist too much without the competition aspect. I think it’s just a great way to test yourself, whether that’s against others in a super competitive race, or that’s just testing if you’re better than yourself from yesterday. That’s what I’ve always been gravitated to with running. So that part of it was pretty quick out of the gate. Like I said, signed up for a race basically immediately.

The OTQ idea in my head definitely took some time. So about a year and a half after I graduated, I ran my first marathon. I signed up for it because it was the last weekend to qualify for Boston the next year, and that’s what I thought would be such an incredible thing to do when I started thinking about the marathon. So ran this small marathon in Pennsylvania in September of 2019, didn’t really know what to expect time-wise, who else would be on the starting line, anything like that…. Ran 2:28, so qualified for Boston, super excited, thought I was running it the next year, and then COVID happened. So ended up running Boston a year and a half later, the one October rendition they ever did in 2021, and ran 2:23 at that race. And that was the first time that I was like, ‘All right, I think the OTQ—which at that point then was 2:18—was in the cards.’

Ended up actually at the front of the open field [in Boston], the pros run 20 minutes earlier or whatever it is. And from the gun had a big group with me, and some people went out a little faster. Eventually broke away from that group maybe around 10 to 13 miles, and slowly was catching the guys that had gone out faster till I found myself behind the lead motorcycles going through all the college towns. People going crazy, and I remember just being like, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here, nor if I can sustain this at all.’ And ended up getting passed actually at about a mile to go by Sean Swift, who’s another New York City guy, so he won the open.

But yeah, so that race right there was definitely the first time that I was like, ‘Oh, I could maybe try this thing.’

You mentioned Brooklyn Track Club—what motivated you to join them and just overall what has that community meant to you and your running journey?

So moved into the city…. Heard about Brooklyn Track Club, and I had moved into East Village, so it was pretty close to just going over the bridge and getting to McCarren Park, where their practices are. Talked to Steve Finley, who’s the founder of the club, and learned about a couple of guys at the time. Like Daniel Winn was one of the main runners, who had run professionally, had run at Oregon. [Steve] was like, ‘Yeah, you’d run with Daniel Winn.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh okay, that would be pretty cool.’

So joined the club, it was a lot smaller at the time than it is now. I think still had maybe 200 people, but far less than what it’s become. So had a really great group of a few guys that I trained with every single week, and I’ve just stayed in it since.

You were painfully close [to the OTQ] in 2022 and then you got sick / injured leading up to 2023. I’m curious if you can just talk about the lessons you took away from being that close to that dream and seeing it slip away, and the motivations you took away from that cycle going into this cycle of going for the OTQ?

Yeah, definitely. So 2022 I was actually signed up to run Chicago with a bunch of other Brooklyn Track Club guys that I was training with a lot. And I embarrassingly, before the Brooklyn Half that year, on my warm up in the Botanical Garden where they had the seeded athletes warming up or whatever it was, slipped on a wet brick and bashed my knee. Ran the race, was fine, and then could barely walk the next day. Didn’t run for probably a month or two after that, so it set me back. So I ended up on my own journey for CIM 2022.

I think it was around the beginning of that build that I started getting coached by Brendan Martin, who still coaches me now four years later. And got really fit, was the fittest I’d ever been, felt really great about it, but at the time still had a 2:23 PR. So went out to CIM, went straight into the pace group, and we went out pretty fast. I think through 20 miles I was still on 2:17-low pace, so had a nice buffer. And like the two marathons before, kind of just fell off that last 10k and just watched the time slip away, which was tough. But I walked away from that happy, like I PR’d by four and a half minutes, and knew I still had a year to get it.

After I got back into running, I started experiencing some pain in my waist. And after some MRIs and X-rays, discovered I’d partially torn both my adductors. No idea how, don’t know if it was just from the race and a delayed reaction or what, but I don’t think I ran again until March, April, something like that. And it was slow, one-minute run, one-minute walk kind of thing. So yeah, the better part of that first half of 2023 I wasn’t doing much. I started running again, but not really working out.

But I had time, right? So got back into it, and that same group of guys that had run Chicago the year before, we were all signed up for CIM, all getting after it. It’s like the one time with any marathon block that I’ve really had a core training group of us doing almost every workout together. Got fit again, felt pretty good about it, and got really badly sick a week before the race and just couldn’t shake it. But knew the fitness was there, so went for it again, held on through 20 miles, and kind of just fell off the cliff a little more than the time before. So it was painful….

But walked away from those two attempts obviously—not obviously, but I was still motivated, right? It was a little tough, but for me I wasn’t going to be done running after the 2024 Trials if I had done it. So if anything, just made me more motivated to push even further with the next window opening up.

You did the pro field in the New York City Marathon this past fall. Especially during the OTQ window, where everyone’s trying to run as many fast courses as possible, curious if you can talk about the decision to do New York this past fall?

So I had reached out to Sam Grotewold, the elite coordinator, before they announced anything about the [OTQ] window. I knew that I would have at least January of this year till the window closed. So I thought this is the time to run New York. I hadn’t run it before, and it would be unbelievable to get the opportunity to run in the pro field. So asked him about it, and he said, ‘Absolutely, you’re in.’ My teammate, Matt Leach, was also already in. So I knew it was the two of us, and from what I’d seen in previous years figured there’d be a few more locals that would hopefully be around my capability that I’d be able to run with, and it would be an awesome experience. And as we got closer, wasn’t really hearing anything about any other locals, and they then announced the field, and it was just the two of us…. Went into the race, expected to run most of it alone. I didn’t expect to run from 200 meters on completely alone. But got to the start line, lined up behind Eliud Kipchoge, not much more you could ask for from just a local guy here.

That was a very mentally challenging and grinding marathon for me. Went out definitely way too fast, they were pushing away really quickly, but fed off the crowd for as long as I could. I remember seeing my girlfriend, her family, my family, was just like, ‘This is crazy.’ People screaming your name because you have your name on your bib, so I have never heard my name screamed so much in my life….

There was never a point in New York City or the build that I thought I was going for the standard at New York. I thought maybe 2:20-ish would be a great day if I had an A+ day on that course. So went out way too hard for what I was capable of on the day, and suffered later. The last 10k from the Bronx back into the city was the most painful six miles I’ve probably ever run in my life. But the mental hole that I had to get through that I think then just made me realize that any pace that I’m pushing through, I’m going to be okay, I can get through it. So that definitely helped me a ton to then push on to this next build and this next marathon.

Can you talk through the decision to do McKirdy as the OTQ attempt for this spring cycle, and then just what did it mean to finally accomplish that goal, accomplish that dream?

Yeah, so I’d run the half [at Rockland Lake State Park] last year, Project 13.1. Went really well, ran a nice PR. Definitely a little bit of a mind-numbing course with the loops, but knew that if anything, it’s fair, right?…. Had seen the success that it had back in 2023, where a ton of people qualified. So just thought it was kind of a no-brainer. It’s easy logistically, being an hour away. So yeah, decided that was it….

Early on it actually hurt a lot, I didn’t feel that great. But it never got so much worse that I was able to just keep clicking off miles. And the beauty of the loop being three miles is I had my family, I had my girlfriend and her family, I had friends that were just throughout the loop and just constant, constant encouragement, which was really big….

I remember getting to 20 miles, which is the classic spot that myself and so many others start to fall off…. There were a couple guys that were just trudging along in the front, nice enough to take that on for everyone. And yeah, just started hoping that the wheels didn’t start falling off. I remember getting to one loop to go and saw the clock and did a little mental math, and was like, ‘All right, we’re enough under that I could probably go like 5:20 pace now and still hit it. So just keep the foot on the gas, keep the foot on the gas.’ And then I got to 25 miles, and that’s when I started smiling a little bit. I looked down, I saw I had seven minutes still. I was like, ‘I just got to go a little under six-minute pace at this point.’

So yeah, then had the last few people that weren’t already at the finish line just screaming as I’m getting closer and closer. I remember my dad being at about 150 meters to go, just screaming on. I knew I had it, and I looked at him, I was just like, ‘I did it, dad, I did it,’ through the finish. I’ve never smiled so much down a finishing straight for a marathon. I’m normally in way more pain. Crossed the line, let out a huge yell, and was stoked. Everyone that had just finished was stoked, the guys that came in right behind.

And then just a ton of emotions, of just so many years of hard work. I’ve been thinking about this for five, six years, but have been running for over half my life at this point, and it definitely was the pinnacle of my running career thus far. I’ve talked about it with several people, I don’t really know what could top this at this point. The goal to get to the Trials is my version of the Olympics, right? So definitely just super special.

And yeah, I thought I had a shot. I didn’t think I was going to get it this early in the window. And it’s almost anti-climactic to the point that now it’s, ‘Okay now you wait two years to go run this thing.’ But yeah, I mean, just elated with it happening of course.

Looking back at your middle, high school or even college running self, is this something that you ever thought would be possible?

I mean I think if I told my high school self that I’d end up running 2:15 and qualify for the Trials, I would not believe it at the slightest. I think I ran like a 5:11 1600-meter in ninth grade, so the fact that I’m running that now for a full marathon is just crazy. I remember freshman year of college hearing about a guy—he graduated right before I came in, but I met him a couple times, and he was a pretty good runner at Miami. And I think he went and ran a 2:35 marathon right out of college. And I remember thinking, ‘Holy crap, this guy just ran sub-six minute [pace] for a full marathon, I’d love to do that one day.’

So that’s the first time I ever even thought about [the marathon], after I’d only ever run a 5k on a cross country course, the longest I’ve ever raced. So the fact that now I’ve run 20 minutes faster than that time back in 2014 I thought that’d be great to run one day, is kind of just unimaginable at this point.

You’ve done stuff like The Speed Project, Hood to Coast over the years as well. Why do you enjoy doing stuff like that, and to what extent is it difficult to balance those things with the typical training cycle and going for an OTQ and the more standard side of the sport?

Yeah, I think those couple relays that I’ve done, I think it’s great for everyone just to split up the serious training that gets a little monotonous, where I’m training for a 5k or I’m training for a half, or whatever it may be. That’s something where time kind of goes out the window, right? I get that there’s an overall time everyone’s going for, but when you’re running several times in a day, it’s not so much. So I think they’re awesome to partake in. They’re really cool events. One is a little more wild than the other, for sure.

But yeah, The Speed Project back in 2022 was an incredible experience. I’m not sure if it’s something I’d want to put my body through again. It definitely messes you up after running 60 or so miles over the course of a day, but it’s just something you can’t really experience with any other event.

And then the Hood to Coast that I did in 2024 was kind of perfect timing, right? It’s between Olympic cycles and all that. So Tim Rossi, he puts together a team every single year, had asked me a couple times before and I had said no, because I was trying to go for the Marathon Trials. So it was a perfect time to do it. And I absolutely loved it, would do it again. May try and do it this year, we’ll see. I have a little bit more flexibility now.

What makes the New York City running community so special to you, or what is your favorite part of the New York City running community as a whole?

I mean in a vague answer, just the community is so massive, which is really great. It’s just something that, all of us that are post-collegiate working professionals, it’s something easy to bring yourself closer to people that actually have the same interest as you, easy way to just have a real community outside of work, of new friends, old friends, whatever it may be.

And I think it’s just—I don’t know if it still is, but it definitely used to be really underrated, of how great New York City running is. People look at it as it doesn’t have all the trails, and you’re in a crowded city. But with the park, with the rivers, with an easy train ride to Van Cortlandt, it’s really an awesome place with just so many runners, like you’re not going to get this density anywhere else. And then on top of that, just all the races that are available outside your front door is just—again, you’re not going to see that in even the meccas of running places to live and train in, you’re not going to get those opportunities. So I think that’s really special too.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

I think that the big thing also is a lot of people look at—not even me, there are obviously professional runners that do this for their whole living, and they’re able to rest right and train at the highest level possible because they have the time to recover. And I think that the key is just to realize, it’s different for everyone, but I think that balance is extremely important, and not putting everything into one thing.

So I mean, yes, to get this goal, I definitely was very busy almost all the time. I’d wake up at 5:15 sometimes to get my first workout in the day, be at my job at 7:30 and then be back home at 5:30 and get a second run in. And it’s busy, right? But I think having so many things going on makes it almost easier, that you’re not so bogged down on one particular thing. And yeah, I think it’s just important that you have other stuff going on just to keep a clear mental headspace.

In 2012, Nigel Mcgregor bought a one-way ticket and moved from Florida to New York. He didn’t have any jobs lined up and didn’t really know many people in the city, but felt he had to just take a ‘leap of faith.’

“It got to a point where I was awake and moving around, but I wasn’t living,” Nigel says. “If you get to that point, you know it’s serious, so something’s got to change.”

The move coincided with him diving deeper into running as well.

He started running in 2001 while in college and ran his first marathon in 2009, but says he didn’t become really competitive until after returning to New York (he was originally born in Brooklyn before moving to Fort Lauderdale as a kid). Nigel eventually broke four hours in the marathon for the first time in 2017, qualified for Boston in 2019 and set a 2:54 PR in 2023 at age 42. He’s now run 58 marathons in total, and is preparing to complete his six-star journey in London this Sunday after running his seventh Boston Marathon as a part of the Pioneer Team this past Monday.

Nigel’s journey is a perfect example of where consistency can take you in the sport. But to him, the biggest lesson he’s learned from his past two decades of running is that you never know who else you might inspire.

We spoke with Nigel to discuss what motivated his move from Florida to New York, how he’s run his fastest times past age 40, the importance of sincerity and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to give an intro of where you’re originally from and how you initially got into running?

So my nationality is Jamaican, I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I had moved to Fort Lauderdale when I was a kid, and grew up down there. And I started running in 2001 when I was in college. I basically started running because I was working part-time at the time with UPS, and I was trying to keep my lungs clear because of all the dust and everything from there. So I started running, and that caught on. I ran my first mile in 2001 on a track here in Brooklyn. It was one mile, did four laps, and that was it.

My first marathon was 2009 in Miami, before I got really competitive—2013 is when I really started diving deep into it when I first moved back [to New York]. I moved back here in 2012, during Hurricane Sandy time, to run the New York City Marathon, and I never left when it was canceled. I never left, got a new career and everything, and I continued my running.

I did the New York City Marathon in 2013. I got to 2017, I broke four hours for the first time. And I was like, ‘Okay, I broke four hours. Now I’m curious, let me see what I can do.’ So I started on the Boston Marathon BQ chasing in 2018, I finally got it in 2019, that was my first BQ qualifier in August.

So that’s a little background of me. I’ve run 58 marathons total in a span of 17 years, from 2009 to now.

You talked about this on [The Rambling Runner Podcast] you were on a couple years ago, how you moved to New York with the goal of running the New York City Marathon that year in 2012, and how you felt you had reached your sort of mental and physical ceiling in Florida, and that was also part of why you moved to New York.

Anything you want to expand on there of what you mean by that, and in the years since, in what ways has New York helped you raise that ceiling? Or how has it compared to your expectations or your goals when you initially moved to New York?

So Florida, after college, after working a couple years down there, it got to a point where I was awake and moving around, but I wasn’t living. If you get to that point, you know it’s serious, so something’s got to change. You don’t want to waste any more time.

I took a leap of faith. I mean, I didn’t know anybody here. I didn’t have any jobs lined up. I just basically got here and had interviews…. And then before I actually got dressed up [for the interviews] in the morning, I’d run in the morning, early in the morning in Prospect Park.

Basically, I was just training myself for life. That’s my whole mindset. I get trained for life and fit for life, so I stay prepared for anything, anytime, anywhere, whether it be job interviews, whether it be photo shoots, whether it be big events, whether it be family events. That’s my mindset. That’s how I stay even-keeled and stay motivated.

Your fastest times have come within the last several years as you’ve pushed past 40-plus years old. Anything you want to touch on in terms of your secret to longevity?

You talked a little bit about this in that podcast as well, about how you’ve had to sort of reinvent your body as you’ve gotten older. How does that play into it too?

Absolutely, because one thing is unavoidable, is our bodies are going to go through changes. That’s going to happen as you get older. So the main thing that I needed to be consistent with is all-around strength and conditioning, which I do six days a week in the gym. I do that after every run, because it actually maximizes your durability.

Because when you get done with running, your metabolism is still going fast, so it’s looking for energy to pull from your body. It breaks down the muscle in the body. So now when you do your calisthenics and you do your workout, it actually maintains your mass.

You hit the BQ in 2019. How have the goals evolved since you hit that and crossed that barrier?

So I was still exploring to see if I can break three hours, if I can eventually get below sub-2:50. In the grand scheme of things, summarizing, if I could get in the 2:40s or high 2:30s, that’d be cool, if it’s being realistic. I’m gonna be 45 in June. But to break three at age 41, that was like, ‘Hey, things are possible’....

I get that from all-around teammates and people that I know who have kids and have families and who’re in their 50s and 60s as well. I’m subconsciously picking their brain, I’m directly picking their brain. So I get that as well from them.

How did you find CPTC, what motivated you to join them, and what has that community meant to you and your running journey overall as well?

So I found CPTC one night, and it was cold and raining, and I was running from Harlem down. And I was like, ‘Okay, nobody’s gonna be in Central Park.’ Then I saw them and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s a group of them.’ It’s pouring rain, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll stick with these guys.’ It was pretty cool….

At first it felt kind of daunting, like, ‘Am I even good enough to keep up with CPTC?’ But after a while, if you come back to the simple approach of how you approach running and approach stuff, all you got to do is basically just show up. And one time, I just showed up at the practice, and everybody’s giving the handshake and fist bump, and that’s all you need. That’s all the inspiration you need sometimes.

Because sometimes it’s not about who’s the fastest at the point or who got the best results. I think the camaraderie of showing up and being there supporting each other, it actually can make a huge critical difference between someone going on a down spiral and lifting somebody up in life.

You seem to do a lot of the same races over and over, whether it be the Miami Marathon, New York City Marathon, you’ve been super into doing Boston the last several years, as well as some smaller marathons and races.

Whether it be any of them specifically or just all of them overall, what motivates you to keep doing these same races over and over every year?

Miami was my first marathon. So I use Miami as my benchmark, as far as an individual and as a person. I had my worst marathon in Miami, it was a 5:20 in 2010. I had a fever, I wasn’t training properly, my legs were not trained properly…. So I look back at that benchmark, I look at Miami as a measuring stick. And also going back home and visiting my mom and old friends, that keeps me coming back there. I’ve done that 14 years.

New York is home, where I was born, so it keeps me coming back. It’s the biggest marathon in the world, and it’s addictive. So I did that 10 times, gonna be 11 times this year. A couple more years I’ll be a streaker there.

And then Boston is the ultimate historic marathon. The standards to qualify for that, the crowd, the history and the town, and the fitness and the dedication that it requires to be there, that’s what keeps me coming back. This is my seventh time doing Boston. I couldn’t imagine me doing Boston one time, now it’s my seventh time. So I use Boston to measure that stick of consistency.

And what keeps me going back to these marathons, I look at it as life to enjoy, to enjoy life as it is, and what life gives you at that point. And it could be changes, things happen. But you stick with it, and you grow and you come back and you reinvent yourself. It’s kind of like a snake that sheds its skin, it comes back ready to hunt again. You got brand new skin.

Any favorite running memories or experiences you’d like to touch on that stand out?

I think 2023 Boston was the best marathon I’ve run in my life. It wasn’t my fastest marathon I’ve run in my life, I ran a 2:58. But the build up, that weekend and then going into the race—it poured during that race, the last 10k it started pouring. So I got that experience, and then the emotions there coming at the end, where you just want to fight all the way to the end. You don’t know what the time is, you just basically stay in that fight. So that was actually a big teachable moment for me, as an athlete and as an individual, going through that experience….

Days like that bring the best out of you…. When you get adverse conditions, it brings the best out of you, because it actually determines if you want to stay in it and be consistent or if you just want to back away. Staying in it and working through it, that unlocks a lot of keys mentally. It defines yourself.

You represented the Pioneer Team at Boston this year. Curious if you can talk a little bit about how that came to be and just what that means to you as well?

So Team Pioneers is something that Black Unicorn Marathoners put together for Ted Corbitt…. So to represent his team as a Black athlete, that’s a big honor within myself. I never thought or imagined in a million years I’d be doing that, and also to be doing Boston and everything coming together. So I’m just embracing it for what it is.

Do you have a favorite part of the New York City running community, or just overall what makes the New York City running community special to you?

I think for the New York City running community, what makes it special is the diversity of the community. You have people from all levels that you can relate to, that you can learn from, whether it be from time, whether it be from health, whether it be from a story that they exchanged with you, that they went through.

Those stories right there inspire me. I look forward to hearing those stories from everyone, no matter what their level is, no matter what they’ve been through, as far as their background, from Olympic qualifiers to people who’ve been through turmoil with their health. So you don’t know what life can throw at you. You just got to take it one day at a time. That’s my mindset of everything. So when I meet people in the running community, and especially in New York, as diverse as it is, I take it as a big gem that we got to appreciate.

What are life lessons you’ve gotten from running, or just ways that running has helped in other areas of your life?

I think the biggest life lesson I got from running is never take what’s given to you for granted, and you do it with the highest sincerity, you do it with the highest dignity, because you don’t know who’s watching you. Whether it be kids who’re watching you from the window, or they’re watching you when they’re driving by, or somebody’s watching when they’re walking by, you don’t know what they’re going through internally and spiritually…. That’s my life lesson to everybody, whether it be in the gym, whether it be outside or in the corporate office, whatever it is….

I had stories of people because of me say, ‘Thank you man, because you inspired me to do that.’ One lady came up to me, it was a couple years ago in the night when I was getting ready to start my run. She goes, ‘Man, because of you, my son is starting to run track. And he said he watched you every day in the window when he was younger.’ That was very humbling to hear.

Any topics that I didn’t specifically ask about or we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

Like I said, as far as runners, we need to be staying sincere to what we stand for, as far as running, what it means to us. Because people are watching. You don’t know who’s actually emulating you as you go along. So that’s the most powerful thing.

Kevin Montalvo remembers being a ‘bright-eyed’ kid when he co-founded Queens Distance Runners in 2013.

It started with just the team aspect, as Kevin saw an opportunity to give Queens runners more of a chance to represent their borough throughout the NYRR racing scene. But over time he started delving into ‘passion projects’ that would eventually become the race organizing arm of the group as well, from the Jackson Heights Mile to the Queens Marathon and much more.

Kevin says a lot of the target audience for his races are Queens residents that ‘don’t know anything about a 9+1’ and ‘don’t have any opinions on New York Road Runners.’ However, as his Queens Distance Runners races have grown, so have his goals to bring in as many runners across the five boroughs as possible.

That growth has coincided with Kevin stepping down as a team captain, now focusing more on tasks like race permits and sponsorships. He admits these other responsibilities are a lot less fun, but he knows they’re a necessity if he hopes to accomplish his dream of taking the Queens Marathon to the city streets and ‘staring down a start line of 10,000 people.’

We spoke with Kevin to discuss how watching the 2010 New York City Marathon inspired him to start running, the growth of the Queens running crew scene as a whole, the balance of the team and race organizing aspects of Queens Distance Runners and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Queens Distance Runners is helping raise money to support the college and career futures of NYC public school students across Queens. If interested and able, you can find the link to donate here.

On the origins of Queens Distance Runners:

So I started running in 2010. I saw the New York City Marathon on TV, I started working at Paragon Sports. I met my now-wife, Maria, who’s a co-founder of Queens Distance Runners. And we felt, way back in 2011, that there was not really, in terms of racing, too much going on. And we were just 20-somethings. So if we were this age, we probably would not have gone through with it. But back then, we were extremely passionate. We were very, I think the right word is surprised, at how many people wanted to not only represent Queens at the races that were already established, but wanted to do fun ideas that at the time were not established, like destination runs. We actually were coming up with destination runs as far back as 2012. But what I noticed that was really the nature of the surprise was the fact that people said, ‘You guys got to organize. You guys got to make something happen.’

We organized the first ever event—it was not under a name or affiliation. It was actually because of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. I took part in that race, and it was obviously a very heavy day, but thankfully I was 25 minutes removed from the finish. And we wanted to give back to The One Fund Boston, and we did. And then when people did it, had a great time, they said, ‘We got to do something again’.... We started establishing a system where more people said we got to organize more events, and that led to a Queens Marathon. But the crux of it—I was also the team captain, the first team captain from 2014 to 2021, and I always wanted to make sure that the team was represented.

Queens Distance Runners has the race organizing aspect, as well as the club aspect. Was it the race organizing first, and then the club followed suit, or just what did that look like at the very beginning, before it evolved into what it is today?

Yeah, so at the very beginning, we were a team. We just wanted to come out, and we wanted to represent Queens Distance Runners. We’re from Queens, and then people were like, ‘Oh, I’m also from Queens’—we’re [running races] in Manhattan, but we’re representing Queens. And that was kind of a new thing. We had teammates that were coming from all across—[Queens] would be the fourth-biggest American city if it was its own entity. And yet we would meet up in Brooklyn, mostly Manhattan, it’s the New York Road Runners’ calendar. But that was the general gist of it.

And then throughout the course of our tenure and time, we would start getting more inundated with the process of applying for permits, organizing events, more passion projects. We organized a Filipino Run, which we now brought back after 10 years. Part of what made and makes Queens Distance Runners so special is that we’re bringing new cultures their own race events….

Now something I’ve noticed is that I’ll see when people register [for Queens Distance Runners races], they’ve got New York, New York, they’ve got Brooklyn, they’re coming from other parts of New York City and the greater New York area, to come to Queens. So I think, personally for me, my biggest moment of maturity was instead of getting more people within Queens to come out, it has evolved to say, ‘Let’s get New Yorkers. Let’s get people from across—as many people as possible—to come and take part in a Queens Distance Runners race.’

Have there been obstacles in balancing having it be the club as well as the race organization? Are there ways in which they feed into each other as well?

A hundred percent. I think that perfect balance, I can’t share enough the contributions of our second team captain, Nancy Silva. And I think this kind of expands on the promise of Queens Distance Runners…. When she took on the role of second team captain of Queen Distance Runners, she implemented things that truthfully, I did not get to.

So I never did a Women’s History Month Run. I never did a Horoscope Run. And Nancy was able to implement her own leadership all across the borough. And in doing that, she was able to connect more parts of Queens than I was. It kind of plays out a little bit like when someone’s elected to an elected office, they might represent the full jurisdiction, but they’re from a particular area. So I was the team captain of Queens Distance, but I’m from Jackson Heights, so naturally people from Corona, Elmhurst are like, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ But now with Nancy as the team captain, she’s out in eastern Queens, now you have a lot of people from Glen Oaks, Little Neck, Bayside, parts of Queens that otherwise may have even been neglected by Queens Distance Runners.

So that was such a cool thing, and it also gave me a chance to go to graduate school, to have a great job working as a communications manager, and to build on the events. So that would not have been possible without our second team captain, Nancy Silva.

You talked about how the 2010 New York City Marathon is what inspired you to initially get into running….

What inspired you specifically while watching that initial marathon, and how did that experience influence you as you have led the Queens Distance Runners cheer zones at the New York City Marathon over the years as well?

Yeah, so I don’t mean to segue a little bit, but the 2010 Marathon was so cool because I think one of the coolest things, and I think New Yorkers get this—New Yorkers love seeing New Yorkers win, and New Yorkers love seeing New York come together. Hopefully in a couple of months, we’ll get that if the Knicks win a chip. So every time I go to MSG during the playoffs, that’s when—but the New York City Marathon is another instance when I feel like we don’t care so much about what’s between the lines, all we want to do is root for each other without fail. And so being a part of that, and seeing that, was such a cool thing.

And over the years, just seeing Mile 14, whether it’s Queens Distance Runners, whether it’s Team WEPA, World’s Fair Run Crew, HUSTLE, Off the Track Astoria, Woodside-Sunnyside Runners, Long Island City Runners, Monarchs, right? Like there are so many teams now that all can claim, because they keep showing up. And 2021 was the last time I ran the New York City Marathon. Coming through, it’s impossible not to have your heart absolutely leave your body, because you see just about everyone that you’ve ever met in your whole life along that stretch. So it’s really cool.

Now I also, at the same time, have been re-inspired by the Japanese running community. That might be something that’s a curveball in terms of what you know of me, but since 2022 I’ve visited Japan eight or nine times, and I’ve been re-inspired by the level of detailed organization they take. It’s a cultural thing, like there are some things that are in Japan that I just know we’re not going to have here in terms of organization. But I think something that I want to bring—you have a sheer volume of super marathon enthusiasts in Japan, but there are also a lot of people that are 400-meter specialists, 5k specialists, they teach youth runners. And I feel like we romanticize the marathon so much here in the states, it literally is downgraded in terms of our casual conversations.

So a big city marathon is happening, ‘Oh, you’re doing the marathon, well I’m only doing the 5k.’ I feel like that’s just such a perception at this point, is that you’re not as good. But in Japan, it’s not like that. You’re respected regardless of what you do, and you have very accomplished distance athletes. So I keep going back there, and I find myself always impressed, and I always want to see what I can do in terms of bringing back some things that I’ve learned from Japan over here.

Your initial race after watching that 2010 New York City Marathon was the Knickerbocker 60k, you kind of jumped into it. That’s an example of, it seemed from the Runners of NYC podcast you did, [your running journey] was a little bit more sporadic at the start, and then you found James Chu, and he helped bring structure.

Anything you’d like to touch on in terms of how he brought structure to your running, and also how that influenced your own coaching and how you saw the importance of coaching for others?

I’m a different man since then. I was known also for running a marathon every Monday, just for fun. I ran from Pelham Bay Park to Connecticut….

I wish I had listened to James Chu sooner in that a lot of people, unfortunately, go through that cycle of over-marathoning, like, ‘Oh all right, that one didn’t turn out so great, but don’t worry, this next one next week, I got it’.... So it took me some time, but since then I’ve become a 5k, 10k runner. Japan has some amazing races. I actually ran a 17:51 in a race that had pacers, and there were six high school kids that were pacing 3:25 [per kilometer] pace, and they were doing it so effortlessly. We don’t have pacers that go at that pace here, and just the sheer proximity of being around them is the only reason why I was able to hang on, because the tail end of that race I was probably on pace for something crazy.

But just to the point, I’m very happy I’ve kind of removed myself from that loop of over-marathoning, and I definitely would like my fellow runners to know that we’re working on getting more exciting non-marathon races down the pipeline. But for sure, James Chu, he’s a real one.

What did the run club / crew ecosystem look like in Queens before you guys started Queens Distance Runners, and to what extent do you feel that Queen Distance Runners and some of those other early ones as well have inspired even more crews in the years since then in Queens?

Yeah, so again, I was this bright-eyed, super excited and enthusiastic kid that just wanted to celebrate diversity, right? But now as I get older, I realize Queens doesn’t need to be discovered, it needs to be invested in. That’s my thinking, that’s my process now. And we established a Queens Crew Cup actually in our races. Essentially, we now have a club standings, and we now have other teams.

And we’re producing races. So Ridgewood Runners, they’re a big group, awesome group led by Julia, they agreed to allow us to produce an event. So it’s their event, but we’re just producing it. We’ll get the volunteers, we got the permit. So that’s a great example of us kind of being in the passenger seat. We know the jurisdiction, what to do in the hyper local scene, but it’s their show. So now it’s kind of like another moment of maturity for me, where I personally get to see another scope of the Queens running collective grow. And that’s one way that we can help, because now we know the ins and outs…. When you have it under the umbrella of another respected crew, I think that establishes the strength of the growing ecosystem of Queens.

But to answer your question more succinctly, I recently came to learn that there was a series of races organized by older Queens crews, and I believe Hellgate Road Runners was one of them. There were plans actually with Forest Park Runners, they wanted to have a race, and they still do organize races. It’s really cool to know that there were these manifested ideas to have bigger events in Queens, that we want to make sure we honor that legacy as well, and also we have new teams and new crews that want to. So we definitely see ourselves as kind of that conduit, that spark.

What are the main factors that you think have helped Queens Distance Runners grow over the years?

A couple things in the Runners of NYC podcast you were on that stood out was you mentioned one of your catchphrases was, ‘We don’t cancel,’ you also talked a little bit about focusing on the importance of every little thing that you’re doing, you never know when it’s someone’s first race, PR race, etc….

Anything you want to expand on with those, or just any other factors that you think have helped your crew or races grow over the years?

Yeah, of course. And that’s a fantastic bit of context, and I’m really happy you touched on that. So I can give an example—the Elmhurst Mile, right? So the Jackson Heights Mile, a lot of people love the Jackson Heights Mile because it’s essentially a straight shot on the 34th Avenue Open Street, which is the gold standard of the Open Street program in New York City, and it’s in Queens…. So this will be the sixth Jackson Heights Mile that’s up here. We don’t have corporate sponsors, we basically are funded by every now and then a mom and pop or a larger-scale Queens established business. I am calling for more sponsors only because our scope is getting bigger.

But back to your point, we have a race that’s in its third year. It’s called the Elmhurst Mile. So you just cross Roosevelt Avenue, now you’re in Elmhurst. Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, two very different yet very unique neighborhoods. And that Jackson Heights Mile, it is more established in the sense that you have the Open Street, which is well-supported. Elmhurst, on the other hand, is a little bit of a transit desert…. And one of the coolest things is that when we said, ‘Hey listen, we have a mile race,’ a lot of people literally did not understand what that meant. And so the first year, they had to literally see it happening. And we have such a great relationship with local stakeholders and with Elmhurst Hospital….

And you had people from Indonesia, it was their first ever—they don’t know anything about a 9+1. They don’t have any opinions on New York Road Runners. They’re not going to do a Road Runners race. They’re just folks trying to make a living in Queens. And that’s my target audience, man.

So maturity for me is realizing that as much as I love representing Queens, ultimately we met in Central Park, right? Like, that’s ultimately it. That’s a lot of people’s origin story. But for that woman that ran because she had a health screening at Elmhurst Hospital, and Elmhurst Hospital is like, ‘Oh yeah we’re a part of the Elmhurst Mile,’ she runs this race, and now she’s going to train, because the next Elmhurst Mile is on June 14. That is what I am most proud of. It’s not a financially successful event. In fact, a lot of these events that I have organized myself, I had to pay out of my own pocket—medals, these are things that have to be purchased upfront. It’s very difficult for us to convince people at first. But now, over the course of time, people are buying into our system.

And I don’t even have to necessarily get them to run a marathon. We can make an argument that Americans over-marathon. But that said, I’m very excited about more opportunities to bring newer events for newer entities that did not realize running can bring everyone together in Queens.

What was different or harder than you expected going into leading Queens Distance Runners, and how have you overcome those obstacles or learned from them along the way?

I’ve certainly learned from it 100 percent, especially going into this moment where I think people are now seeing me in a different light. So my responsibilities now are a lot less fun. Personally I loved and I miss being the team captain. The meetup is Elmhurst Hospital, we’re going to do a few loops of Queens Boulevard—that was the joy of my life, and that’s a part of my life I’ve had a very hard time saying goodbye to. But I think giving other people and other new leaders their own opportunity to lead in their own way speaks to the strength of Queens Distance Runners, as opposed to me wanting to interject myself again.

But that said, wanting to, I suppose, get into the new responsibilities of things—now I have to get permits, I gotta get sponsors. So these are things that are a lot less fun. But on a personal level, I understand it’s necessary if we’re going to get to that point where one day we’re staring down a start line of a Queens Marathon with 10,000 people.

The Queens Marathon—can you talk about the origins and how that race initially came to be?

So the the origin behind the Queens Marathon—there was New York City, Brooklyn, but kind of the same way we were really young and idealistic, we felt as if though there needed to be a marathon of its own in Queens. And it always has been in Flushing Meadows Corona Park…. The Jackson Heights Mile was a huge vote of confidence, when we realized, ‘Hey look, we can not only get permits, we can get big numbers out.’ And that’s when we sort of looked at the Queens Marathon, instead of it being something where it’s just a bunch of friends, their friends, and potentially other teams that are friends with our friends, it ended up being something that was a community event, but has now become, I would say, budding on a big city event.

COVID was a real bitter pill to swallow, because we had been working so hard to get from 500 to 1,000 registered runners, and we were about to cross it in 2020. It was going to be like the Super Bowl, man, and I was so nervous. We had over 100 volunteers, we invested tens of thousands of dollars, shirts, medals, all of that wiped out. And on top of that, I got sick. I got COVID version one, I passed it on to my wife. And there was just so much death. It was hard for us to think about losses, right, when all that was around us was either life coming to an end or just, are we going to make it through this? I think we all remember the uncertainty of it.

But once we eventually got our feet back, and I was still the captain at that point, one of the most beautiful things was that we had people that were better off, and we started a fund amongst members. This is actually one of the first times I’m speaking to this…. Our members that were well-off donated entire stimulus checks, and that was the most beautiful—that honestly made me feel like, ‘Okay, this is Queens Distance Runners. This is why we made this thing.’ We were so proud of it. It was sort of like one of those faith in humanity restored moments.

Then I started the Jackson Heights community group run in 2020, we kept getting everyone to come out and run. That led to the permit of the Jackson Heights Mile. And then we actually submitted a permit for five consecutive races on the same day [for the Queens Marathon]. So we essentially organized five races where we had 15 people run with masks on at the start, and they would have to run away from each other, but we basically had five different heats of 15 people…. And the fact that we were able to get together like 30 volunteers, that made me realize, ‘Okay, we got to see this through. We got to take this baby to the streets one day.’ So that’s what made me reaffirm—and now this past Queens Marathon weekend last December, which had over 2,000 people over the course of two days, was a real coming of age moment for me.

You touched on it a little bit there, but you’ve had the vision of trying to take it to the streets. Anything you want to touch on there in terms of goals, timelines, or to what extent you’re trying to make that happen and when that could come to fruition?

So it’s—and I appreciate the question. It’s one of those things where you have to be honest. You have to be honest with people, and you got to do your best to do it the right way. You have to involve the community. You have to tell the community board. You have to tell everyone, because we’re not going to host an event unless we plan on bringing it back. And we’ve kind of already proved it by having a race where we actually shut the streets down, where we actually work with MTA, DOT, right?

We’re not some big corporation. We’re a mom and pop. My wife and I, we co-founded this, we have a lot of people that believe in it, and we were able to successfully shut down Bayside, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and soon to be—well, you’ll just have to follow Queen Distance Runners to see some soon to bes in 2026. But I would argue that the important thing is that we’ve kind of already made our mark, and that we have very well-celebrated events on the streets of Queens currently, and now it’s just a matter of time until we piece it together. That said, we do have a pending permit with the city of New York for December 6th, and the permit is pending.

Anything else you’d like to touch on?

Yeah, so the important thing, for us, has really now been to align ourselves with our fellow Queens crews and entities that want to engage with distance running, right? So now that we’re producing a race for Run HUSTLE Run, now that we’re producing a race for Ridgewood Runners, I think now it’s kind of just like a ‘If you build it, they will come’ scenario. Where now people realize, ‘Hey listen, if we get more experience, we hire more people that are more experienced and have known how to deliver grants XYZ.’

But the heart, the core, that special sauce, again, back to my original point where Queens—we’re not trying to be discovered anymore. We want the investment. We expect, and want, people to take a look at what we’re doing here and now say, ‘Hey listen, this is something that’s going to outlast this particular band of characters, this generation.’ The next generation can look forward to not necessarily having to run a marathon, because these guys have great races all over Queens.

We want to continue to grow with our fellow crews. The more we provide people with opportunities, the better things you’re going to get, not just for runners themselves, but also for Queens-based brands, Queens-based non profits. There are amazing opportunities for fundraising. A good example is Immigrants Run New York City, right? And to be clear, Queens Distance Runners as an organization has to remain apolitical, but that said, it’s very obvious immigrants run New York City. So we organized that event, now we have more people from the immigrant justice side that now have become runners. So that’s just another example of engaging one particular industry, community and just bringing that into what we’re doing here in Queens.

For a while, Tony Gao figured qualifying for the Boston Marathon would be the pinnacle of his running career.

“‘Once I break three [in the marathon], what else is there? I don’t even know what could possibly happen after that,’” Tony remembers thinking.

But after he hit that barrier while a senior in college, he just kept running. And he hasn’t stopped since.

Along the way he’s met others that have continued to raise the bar and make Tony rethink what goals might be possible, and has also ingrained himself in a few different running communities across the U.S., from Washington D.C. to his native Chicago. However, he says the New York City running community has been a ‘magnitude greater than any other running community I’ve ever seen across the places I’ve lived.’

We spoke with Tony to discuss how the NYC running community is symbolic of the city as a whole, what drew him to marathons and going for a BQ while in college, how his goals have evolved in the years since, balancing running as an aspect of his identity and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to start off with a general intro of where you’re from originally, what brought you to New York City and then how you got into running?

Yeah, sure. So born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, another big running city. Went to school throughout there, went to University of Illinois for college, graduated in 2018 and then hopped around the country for a little bit post-grad. I moved to the East Coast, working in D.C. for a few years, then the pandemic hit, and that’s sort of the time to do a little bit of the virtual nomad situation, as I think a lot of people, particularly in the tech sector, did. So at the time I was pretty into running, and that was sort of the navigator to where I did my virtual nomad. So I spent six weeks in Denver / Boulder—elevation’s no joke, that absolutely destroyed me. And then spent another five or six weeks in San Diego….

Then I think around 2024-ish—my wife went to school in New York City, and I think a lot of our friends all pretty much started flocking over to New York City. And we felt like this is not the stage in our lives where we want to settle down or buy a house and all that jazz, so figured it was a great time to move over to New York. So we moved here January 2024, and been loving it ever since.

As far as running goes, I actually started as a swimmer in high school, really bad at swimming. I’m pretty short, and if you’ve ever seen any of the top swimmers, they’re all just 6-foot-6 behemoths, and I just could not hang. And then junior year, there was actually a person who I had a crush on who convinced me to join the summer camp leading into cross country season. And I figured, ‘I absolutely hate swimming, so might as well give running a shot.’ What’s funny to me, in retrospect now, is she actually dropped out of running once the school year started, like, ‘This just isn’t for me, my knees hurt, I don’t like this.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I already spent all my birthday and Chinese New Year money on my running shoes, so we’re just gonna keep doing it.’

And it worked out great, because I really enjoyed running, then joined the University of Illinois club team in college. At the time, I was really, really into trying to hit the Boston Marathon qualifying time. So in my first marathon as a freshman, came 30 seconds short and change, which was brutal. But then senior year of college I ran the Chicago Marathon, hit the Boston qualifier then, and just been literally running ever since. I think it’s been such a crazy trajectory of running from high school all the way over to what running is now. But yeah, I’ll pause there.

What motivated you to want to continue running for the club team in college…. And what motivated you to want to [run marathons in college] and gravitate to that earlier than most people do?

Yeah, I think a lot of the early content creation for running that really piqued my interest on YouTube was people running the Boston Marathon and just hyping it up for how much of a historic experience it was. I think that, coupled with a lot of content coming out for ultra marathons at the time, like UTMB was just starting to really get legs. And I think farther distances always made me more interested. I did zero track throughout pretty much my entire running career. I think running fast was never something that interested me. Like doing a 400 on the track, and the feeling of all the lactic burning and wanting to vomit, was never appealing to me. I think just that slow burn of running distance and where your two legs can take you was always something that was really appealing to me….

[Running] is a good way to meet people, and I think that’s why I kept doing it. It’s always good to have people who keep you accountable. And so that’s sort of why I joined the club team. But I definitely was more a fan of the longer distance stuff, which didn’t necessarily mesh well with the club team. So I would show up for cross country season to just get the miles in with them. But then simultaneously, whenever they were going to a random cross country race, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do my 18-mile long run instead.’

On [the Keeping Pace podcast] you were on a couple years ago you talked about how you struggled with injuries through college, immediate post-grad. And at the time, you said you were surprised you’ve kept up with running considering all the injuries that you went through….

As you’ve had time to reflect on that, what do you think are the main things that kept you running and kept you going through some of those periods of overcoming obstacles?

Yeah, injuries I feel like are just super inevitable in running. I even had a pretty big injury with my glute medius strain going into the New York City Marathon last year too. It’s strange—after a while, running for over a decade at this point, it just becomes such an ingrained thing inside you. When you can’t do it, you feel like there’s something missing. Which feels so weird to say, because I hope to one day, if I don’t run anymore, come to terms with that. But that’s just something, at this point in my life, I will not—I’m going to keep trying to run.

I guess to take a step back, when I think about my trajectory of running, when I first started running in high school, I feel like running was considered a really lame sport and not cool. So for a lot of those reasons, I kept a pretty far distance of that being my identity. And then now it’s like the coolest thing ever, right? And everyone is saying they’re a runner, or a hybrid athlete, and what have you. I feel like, as much as I hate saying, ‘Oh, running is such a big part of my identity,’ it really is. I associate as a runner. And so despite injuries, I think because it’s such a big part of my identity, it’s something that I keep persevering for.

But also, as I’ve gone through these cycles of injuries, being just fit and active—I’ve seen from other friends too, that’s such a big part of what it takes to navigate what it is to be an adult, right? You got to stay active somehow. I think that keeps a lot of my sanity in place, doing something outside work, outside of partying or drinking and stuff like that.

Something else that you talked about in that podcast was the importance of not having running be your only source of identity, so that you are able to overcome those obstacles and push through when things aren’t going well just on the running front.

How do you balance it not becoming too much of your identity, but also it being a part of your identity is the reason you stay consistent with it, and you keep doing it?

I think whenever people get frustrated that they weren’t able to hit their goals, a lot of people often say, ‘Oh, it’s just running.’ But there’s a reason—you train, you wake up at 6am to do these crazy workouts, right? Or you sacrifice Saturdays to do these crazy workouts. I think it’s only human to feel that sort of identity and pull, because it does take up so much time of your life.

But I feel like as I’ve been able to reflect more about my running, as corny as it is, for me I definitely feel like I’ve had to enjoy the journey a lot more. I love just the journey of logging miles with my team, or just those quiet mornings where I’m doing a workout alone, and being able to think about my day more, or just reflect on my life quietly. And I feel like that’s sort of the biggest thing for me.

You were born and raised in Chicago, and you spent some time in D.C., and got involved in the running communities there. I’m curious if you can compare and contrast what’s similar and different between the running communities in those major cities versus what you’ve experienced in the New York City running community the last couple years?

Yeah, the New York City running community is a magnitude greater than any other running community I’ve ever seen across the places I’ve lived in my life. And maybe that has to do with just the running boom post-pandemic. But I was in D.C. from 2018 to 2021, and there’s a handful of smaller social clubs. The club team that I was running with, Capital Area Runners, they were one of a handful of teams where you’re gonna do our workouts Tuesday, Friday and Saturday…. And it’s very similar to Chicago. It was still growing a bit more while I lived there from 2021 to 2023, but there were still only a handful of options you had. There were some social clubs, and there were some clubs that were a bit more on the serious side.

And then in New York you have every option under the sun for you. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be tied to whether it’s a social club or a serious club. There’s also just interest-bound, or demographic-bound, right? And I think that’s been the coolest thing about New York. It can also feel very overwhelming…. You’ll see all these random events popping up. I think that’s really cool with the New York City community.

You can be just a part of a single club, and that meets what you need. But there’s 100 other things happening all at once. People can be doing these gigantic long runs with Old Man Run Club on Saturday, and then eat dim sum afterwards. Or you can be doing your 6am workouts in Central Park with Central Park Track Club. You have every option in New York, and I think that’s sort of indicative of how New York City is as a whole—any interest you can possibly think of, it’s here. Whereas I feel like somewhere like the D.C. area or Chicago, you’re definitely a bit more restricted as far as the options you have.

At least on the competitive club side you were involved with NBR as well as 212 Athletic now. What motivated you to join those communities and how have they aided in your running journey in New York City as a whole?

Yeah, for sure. I absolutely love the two clubs I’ve been a part of…. A lot of the people who I would say are close friends I met in New York City who don’t even necessarily do NBR regularly, I met them through NBR. I think that’s been a really awesome experience. Once I wanted to take running a bit more seriously in the New York City racing community, particularly at the local competitive level, I just figured it was a natural step to join the local competitive group with NBR. And they’re all super awesome people.

A lot of the people I would’ve trained with are closer to Prospect Park area, and I live in LIC…. And so last year, in the summer, I transitioned to 212 Athletic. They’ve been a really, really cool team to work with. I think they only started a few months before I joined, but they’ve been really great as far as pushing the ante, or raising the bar. I’m like the third slowest person on that team, which is crazy to think about, and I’m getting dropped every workout. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need, at least where I’m at right now, where I really want to sort of take that next jump in performance.

You mentioned when you first started getting into marathons in college the goal was BQ….

How have your goals with running shifted over the years as you crossed that barrier and got into that next level beyond BQ?

Yeah, I think a few things sort of changed after I hit the Boston qualifier. I think it’s changed a lot over the past few years with how popular running has been. Since I joined the New York City running scene, I’ve just seen so many fast people who maybe have a similar background to me, or maybe even started running far later in life, and the bar is just rising so high every day. And you see that reflected in Olympic Trials qualifier times also lowering, or the Boston qualifier times lowering.

I think for me, those goals that I had when I first started running seem so restrictive, because I see now people are doing some of the craziest things…. I think when you start seeing people around you doing amazing things, that just pushes you to not limit yourself as far as what you think is possible. Because for a while I was thinking, ‘Oh man, once I break three [in the marathon], what else is there? I don’t even know what could possibly happen after that.’

I think a lot of it is also now reflecting on how I race or run. I think a lot of people can get really obsessed with, ‘I need to hit 6:50 pace,’ or whatever it is, to hit the Boston qualifying time. Now I go into races, I think, ‘How can I just pull as much effort out of myself for a given race,’ and then that will always result in a fast time in my opinion. I think when you switch from, ‘I need to hit these splits exactly,’ to, ‘Let me just push myself to 90, 95 percent,’—there are always people around you in every single race in New York City, those people are gonna be the ones that drag you to that extra level.

And so as far as goal setting, I haven’t necessarily put a time on things. It’s more a matter of, ‘How can I make sure that I’m training myself, during my training cycles, to pull as much out of myself during a race day,’ and then we’ll see what the time is.

Anything on long-term goals when it comes to running, whether it’s times, whether it’s different distances, or even just how you think about running long term?

Yeah, one of my side quests of running, I think for a lot of people who run marathons, is to hit the World Marathon Majors. Fingers crossed I don’t pick up an injury, but I should be able to get my last star in London [this year], which is super exciting. I’ve thought a lot about, ‘What do I do after that?’ Because I feel like that’s been taking such a big part of my mind space about what I want to get done with running. But yeah, I think maybe similar to how New York functions, where it’s just on to the next thing, I’ve had very little time to really reflect on what I do want to do next.

There are still so many races that I want to do. I want to do an OSR race at some point. There are a bunch of really cool races coming up this year that I want to do, for example Bandit Grand Prix. I did that last year, it was an amazing experience, recommend it to anyone. And I think beyond that as well, maybe once I am done officially with the six stars, I’ll fiddle with an ultra marathon. I don’t know if I can do anything more than 50k right now.

But yeah, I think very similar to what a lot of people have probably said before, I’m just enjoying my time being healthy and running. And it’s been great to work with different teams and be a larger part of the running community, whether it’s pacing a race or just volunteering at different events. I think that has given me a lot of fulfillment, even if I’m not necessarily chasing a goal right now.

Any favorite running memories or races that stand out that you’d like to touch on?

I hope a travel experience like this never gets surpassed, but one running memory that really sticks out to me is—so at the time, I was training to get a Berlin Marathon qualifier, which was sub-2:45. And so I had registered for the Hamburg Marathon. Forty-eight hours before I was supposed to fly out, I realized my passport was not valid for that flight. And so in that 48 hours, I had to book an emergency passport appointment in Minnesota, which means that I have to rebook my entire itinerary. I have to fly to Minnesota, crash on my friend’s couch, get a passport that same day, fly through the Netherlands instead of going directly to Hamburg. Get to the Netherlands, turns out that there’s a transportation strike for metros and trains to Germany, and so I had to book a nine-hour bus ride from the Netherlands to Hamburg. And then yeah, I showed up at midnight the day before the race, got my race bib, and then I ran the race.

I ran 2:44:57 to qualify into Berlin. And as much as I want to say that was incredible to hit that time, given everything, I think one thing that I reflect on about that entire travel ordeal was just the amount of people that were in my camp helping me navigate that entire experience. I had friends in Minnesota who helped me stay and crash while I was dealing with that. My wife was really, really helpful as far as finding alternative transportation, same with my brother…. When all these people in your life help support you just to get to the starting line, I think that was a really incredible moment for me.

And I think it was really easy for me when I got to the start line to think, ‘Oh man, that was such a terrible, stressful, 72-hour experience, I’m just gonna write this in’—you gotta show out if this many people put this much effort to get you to the start line. But yeah, I wouldn’t hope that travel experience for even my worst enemies. That was not fun.

What life lessons have you gotten from running, or just ways running has helped in the other areas of your life?

Yeah, I think especially living in New York, there’s always something different, or people always move on to the next thing. But I think it is really important to find some sort of steadiness in your life. And it doesn’t have to be running. I never feel qualified to give that much advice, frankly to anyone, because I feel life’s not deterministic, like you can just luck out in life. But I think one thing we certainly can control in our life is finding some sort of activity that brings us joy and that we can stick to, because I feel like oftentimes that unlocks a lot of other doors in your life that you wouldn’t necessarily even think of, beyond the sport.

I’ve met some of my closest friends through running throughout my entire life, from high school, college and beyond. I think what started as something to just stay in shape has really transformed to opening a lot of doors, of meeting some amazing people. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be running. I think people who want to do CrossFit or cycling—if you stick to that, that is really an amazing way to find community, whether it’s through running or otherwise.

Anything that I didn’t specifically ask about that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

I feel like running has gotten so much popularity, in a lot of good ways and bad ways. I think good ways, it’s really propelled the sport, and made people like myself rethink my goals and what’s possible out there. I also think just running products in general have leveled up insane. I remember my first marathon eating GUs and wanting to vomit. And now we have Maurten and then we have a billion other options that will not make you want to throw your guts up. And I think that advancement in running has been super amazing and sort of propelled the performances you see today, which as a big fan of track and field / road races, it’s been cool to see records just getting shattered.

Obviously it comes with other perks. I’m sure no one loves the Matt Choi effect, right, where you just see people pulling out their GoPros at every race, and having to navigate through that. But I think in full picture, this running boom has been amazing.

When Ottilia Demeter moved to New York from Hungary 15 years ago, she didn’t speak any English and was coming off a cancer diagnosis that she says ‘changed everything’ for her.

But she worked hard to overcome the language barrier and fit in within her new home, and also picked up running as a way to live a healthier lifestyle. Over time that healthy hobby evolved into a larger aspect of Ottilia’s identity, as she fell in love with the woods of Forest Park, dove deeper into ultras and trails, and eventually joined Forest Park Runners.

Ottilia also started coaching as a way to help newer runners avoid making the same mistakes she did as a beginner, becoming a coach for Forest Park Runners along with both the Queens Centers For Progress NYC Marathon team and Achilles Queens. She says all of this work connects with her main goal of ‘helping people,’ adding that her favorite part of the NYC running community as a whole is how much it supports others and has given back to her in times of need as well.

We spoke with Ottilia to discuss how running developed from a hobby to a central role in her life, what made her fall in love with trail running, her experience walking the NYC Marathon after a bike accident last fall, what makes the annual Forest Park Classic 4 Miler unique and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to just give an intro of where you’re from originally, what brought you to New York City, and then how you got into running as well?

So my name is Ottilia, and I was born in Hungary. I moved to New York about 15 years ago, I left everything behind. And back in Hungary, I wasn’t a runner at all. In fact, I hated running. So running was the last thing I wanted to do.

But then I moved to New York, and I had some heart issues. So a little more than a year before I moved to New York, I found out I have cancer. I went through some procedures back in Hungary, and that basically changed everything for me. So I wanted to live a healthier lifestyle, and I wanted to give meaning to my life. I always did something—I went to the gym, and then I did small things for my health, but nothing serious, so it wasn’t the main thing in my life.

And then when I moved here, I saw everyone running in New York City. I went, ‘Hmm, it must be good, because everyone is doing it.’ Anywhere you go—you go to Central Park, you walk on the streets, go to any parks, everyone is running. So I tried. And then it didn’t go too well obviously. But I caught the bug, and I started taking it seriously, and I met people online, other runners. I joined the Forest Park Runners about five years after I moved to New York, and then everything just fell into place. Running became the main focus in my life. And then a couple of years later, I dug into coaching. It was mainly because I had all the injuries that you can have, and I made all the mistakes you can make….

When I came here, I didn’t speak the language at all. But I fought hard for acceptance and wanted to fit in. Education for me was extra hard because of the language issues, but I overcame that obstacle as well, although I am still learning.

As you reflect on the past decade-plus since you started running, what do you think are those factors that made it go from just another form of exercise and a form to stay healthy, versus something that started to become a central role in your life overall?

Yeah, obviously everyone has a story with a 5k and then a 10k and then half marathon. And I wanted to sign up for the New York City Marathon. My ex-boyfriend, who lived in Bay Ridge, the route goes by his street, and he says, ‘Okay, we’re gonna go out and watch runners.’ And I told him, ‘No, I’m not going, I’m not interested, that’s the stupidest thing ever, watching runners all day long.’ Eventually I went, and by the end of the day, I was like, ‘I want to do this. It seems so exciting. It seems so cool.’

So that was actually the point when I started taking running more seriously, and I increased distance. I ran a bunch of half marathons and a couple of marathons, but for some reason—I run in Forest Park, so I started running trails, and I realized that within running, trail running is my thing. That is really my thing, and also long distance. So I transitioned into trail ultra running. I was like, ‘The woods and the trees—I think that’s home for me.’ So I became an ultra trail runner. And yeah, that’s life. It’s more than a hobby, it’s more than just for health. It became me.

What about [trails] piqued your interest and made you want to dive deeper into that, versus traditional road running, track, etc.?

It’s just a feeling…. Road running is fun, thousands of people come together, they run together, so much fun. But for me, it’s more satisfying being just in the woods alone doing my own thing. While I’m on my runs, it’s just me. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just you and the nature and your thoughts.

So to me, ultra running, it’s a smaller community, it’s a kind of closed community, especially trail running. It just gives me peace, and I don’t know, just everything that I was looking for.

What is your favorite part about coaching and made you want to continue to dive deeper into it over the years as well?

It’s obviously to help myself and help others as well, especially now, because the running community is growing insanely fast, and we have a lot of new runners. And I would like to help them to not get injured, or to make all the mistakes I did before. So it’s basically just helping others.

On Forest Park Runners specifically, curious if you can talk about when and how you joined them initially, and then what makes that group or community special to you?

When I moved, I lived in Forest Hills, and then I moved to Brooklyn, and then I moved back here. I live in Amherst right now, and I was looking for run clubs in the area. So a couple of run clubs came up, and back then, I just started running, and I see some things on social media that intimidated me. I was seeing fast runners, and I thought those clubs only accept fast runners.

When I found Forest Park [Runners], they seemed very friendly, and something I needed at that point. So I signed up, I met them. And then they were everything I expected, very friendly, very welcoming, very family-oriented, and very—I don’t know, just like I said, I felt very comfortable with them from the first moment, and still. I made a lot of friends.

You’ve also been involved with the Queens Centers For Progress a bit. Can you talk about your involvement there and what you do for them?

So the Queens Centers For Progress, they work with people with disabilities, and they are one of the charities for the New York City Marathon, and other marathons as well. So one year, they asked me if I wanted to coach their charity run group, and I said yes. And it was a very successful session, wonderful people. And that became a tradition. So before the New York City Marathon, they reach out to me, and then I coach their charity group.

You do some work with Achilles as well—anything you’d like to expand on there of why you wanted to get involved with them, and why that’s also important to you?

So for me, the main thing, I always want to help people. And Achilles—those people are obviously someone who needs help, and it just feels so good supporting them. They have workouts in Flushing Park every weekend. I try to make it as often as I can.

And also we are working on something at this moment—I got a request from Achilles to help them with strength training and stretching and that kind of stuff…. So I am hoping to make the experience for them even better than before. Because I’m also an injury prevention specialist, so obviously those people need not just running, but more care and more attention.

Last year before the New York City Marathon, you got into a bike accident the month before, but then you still walked the full course even after the accident, in your sling.

Why was doing that and walking the race, even if you were hurt, important to you, and what did you learn from that experience compared to the previous times you were able to run the race?

Well, I learned a lot. So the reason I decided to do the marathon—it’s funny because, yeah, I had an accident. I had a bike accident, and I needed surgery. I broke my collarbone and three ribs, and they put some plates in my shoulder. So the surgery was a month before the New York City Marathon, and back then I was 100 percent sure that I’m not going to run it. I have to cancel it. But I didn’t cancel it because I’m a very stubborn person, so if I want to do something, I will probably do it.

I said, ‘I’ll wait until the last day, and then if I still feel like I am not capable, then I’m not gonna do it.’ And then the medal came out, and I really liked the medal. So I was like, ‘Okay, I have to talk to my doctor.’ And I told him about my idea, walking the New York City Marathon. He wasn’t too happy. He told me it’s possible, but I have to be very careful.

I’m not saying that it wasn’t a good idea, because I finished it. Physically for me, it didn’t really hurt me. But I think at that point, a month after my surgery, I shouldn’t have done it. After six months of the injury, I’m still in recovery. Our body is smarter than us, so that seven hours, and also the recovery from the marathon, that all took away time and energy from my real healing that my body needed. So I probably wouldn’t do it again.

But on the other end, I learned something very important. So I normally finish the marathon in the middle, five hours. So I’m in the crowd, I can enjoy all the entertainment, the cheering, everything. Now, obviously I was in the back, so I learned how those people who walk the marathon and are slower feel, because they have minimal support, which means a lot honestly. Like the energy from the crowd, the entertainment, the aid stations, the physical support, like hydration and whatever, they mostly miss all those things. I was truly thankful for some of my friends who were still out there by the time I got to the finish line, and some of the run clubs, but not as many.

So those people who are in the back, all the way in the back, they need a lot of mental strength to finish the race without all that others have. That’s what I learned. I always have respect, because I have a lot of friends walking, they are walkers or slow runners. I always respected them, but now I have even more respect for them.

You’ve done a bunch of marathons, you’ve done a bunch of ultras—anything you’d like to touch on in terms of favorite races or memories that stand out over the years?

This will be my third time [running the TGNY 100k]. TGNY100 was the first 100k I ever ran, and since then I’m either running it or volunteer at the aid station. So last year I was volunteering at the 100k finish line, this year I am going to run the 100k for the third time. It’s a road race, but it’s challenging. And I love challenges….

Over time I realized that I am not a fast runner, and speed is not my thing, and it’s never going to be my thing…. But distance, that is my thing, instead of speed.

Any life lessons you’ve learned from running overall, or just how running has helped in other areas of your life outside of the sport?

Yeah, I just had a post not too long ago—I was that type of person when I was young, I started so many things, but I barely finished them. If I found them hard or not interesting, I just left them. And then running, that taught me to change my mindset, basically.

Because you start running a race, and you get tired or bored in the middle of the race, then you never get to the finish line. But you have to finish it if you want the medal. If you want the satisfaction, you have to finish it, no matter how hard it is. So that was a huge change for me.

What is your favorite part of the New York City running community, or what makes the New York City running community as a whole special to you?

I like the way they support each other. They come together for fun, but also, if you need help, they are there. I learned this when I had the accident back in September—the day after my accident, the running community came together and they started fundraising for me. I never even asked, just they wanted to help with the expenses and everything.

So they are very supportive, and you can count on them. Even if you don’t run together every day or you meet occasionally at races, their ears and eyes are everywhere thanks to social media. So if there is anything you can be sure, you know the running community is there to offer help.

Any favorite or underrated race in New York that you recommend to others and think everybody should be doing?

Oh my god, there are so many races.

Well, let’s promote our race, the Forest Park Classic 4 Miler. Highly recommend that race in Forest Park. It’s actually a special race because you run on track, road and trails. So it’s a mix four-miler. We’ve been around for four years, actually. So the race is every year on Memorial Day Weekend. It actually attracts a lot of runners from all over New York City. But yeah, the more the merrier.

Any topics that I didn’t specifically ask about or we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

One thing we didn’t talk about—a couple of years ago, also before the New York City Marathon, I was in 9+1 when I found out that I have a brain tumor. So it kind of set me back, because mentally, emotionally, I was deep into training for the New York City Marathon, and I got this news, and it crushed me. But for some reason, I put myself together, and I decided to continue my training and run the marathon. I wanted to inspire others….

It’s so weird, like everything happens to me before the New York City Marathon. I just realized that. And I ran the marathon that year, it was three years ago. I had a sign on my shirt that said, ‘I’m running with a brain tumor, what is your superpower?’ I got a lot of support and love on the course from people, even from people with the same conditions I had, and also from the crowd. I actually PR’d my New York City Marathon. So instead of being slower, it gave me a huge boost.

So yeah, I would say just go out there no matter what, and then magic will happen.

Abby Shoemaker still isn’t quite sure how she made the jump to Olympic Trials Qualifier.

Up until a year ago, she didn’t even think it was a realistic goal for her. She’d run several marathons in the 2:50-3:00 range, but still felt far away from an OTQ. Then one day while training for the 2025 Boston Marathon, Abby remembers waking up, running ‘the best workout of [her] life,’ and all of a sudden believing that once unattainable target was within reach.

The Brooklyn resident ran 2:44 in Boston, then a 2:37 as part of the pro field in New York, and last month won the Napa Valley Marathon in a course-record 2:35 to punch her ticket to the 2028 Olympic Trials. She calls her progress over the last year an example of all her training coming together at once, without even ‘being able to predict it.’

Abby’s qualifier comes seven years after her mom, Perry, qualified for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials with a 2:43 at age 48. She credits her mom with being a huge inspiration in her running journey over the years, and the person who actually had to convince her to stay involved in the sport competitively after high school—a decision she can safely say was the right one.

We spoke with Abby to discuss the reasons she kept running in college for UChicago and afterward for the Dashing Whippets, how the sport has helped her do hard things in other areas of her life, her experience running in the professional field at last year’s New York City Marathon and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Just to start off, if you want to give an intro of where you’re originally from and your earliest memories and origins of running?

Yeah, so I’m originally from Virginia, I moved around a lot as a kid because my dad was in the military. And I’ve been running since I was quite young. I did Girls on the Run when I was maybe eight or nine. I was not that good at soccer, and at that time I had a younger sister, and then a baby sister too, and just the easiest sport for our mom to put us in, that was easiest to ferry people around with, and pretty cheap, was running.

So we did youth running. I got my first pair of spikes when I was maybe 10, 11, like tiny little Sauconys. And I did the USATF circuit for a while, and then I just ran in high school, ran in college, ran as an adult. So it’s one of those things I’ve been doing for a while. But my whole family runs. My mom’s a very good runner, she’s an elite runner actually, she’s better than me. Yeah, pretty basic origin.

I saw a video from UChicago that they put out, you talked about how your mom convinced you to keep running when you went to college. Curious if you can talk about that story, the reasons that she gave you at the time, and how do you sort of look back at that in hindsight?

So my mom’s been a huge inspiration for me on the running front and a great role model with that. When I was applying to colleges, she hadn’t yet qualified for the Olympic Trials, but she ended up qualifying for the Olympic Trials Marathon when I was in college, which was a really incredible thing. At that time, I think she knew how important being on a team was, even when it’s something like a cross country team, which I think a lot of people don’t think of as a team in a traditional sense. But it is a team. It’s a great community.

And yeah, it was one of those things where I wasn’t necessarily recruited to run in college, so I had a ton of choice about whether or not I wanted to do it, how much I wanted to make it a part of my life. And I think having my family all be runners, having my mom be like, ‘This will be a great opportunity,’ really was just correct. I had a wonderful time running in college. I made a ton of friends who I’m still very close with, and it was just a really phenomenal experience, which really defines my college experience in many ways.

When you saw your mom qualify for the Trials in 2020, was it on your mind that you could do that at all?

It’s funny, as I think at that time, I definitely did not think I could get it. I want to say my 10k PR, at the time my mom qualified, was pretty close to six-minute pace, which is I guess now [the Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying pace]. At that time, it was a little bit faster than what the marathon qualifying pace was. But I was very far from her ability level. I was mostly just incredibly impressed that she was going out and running a 2:43 marathon.

But I think it did put in my head as that being the gold standard. It was a thing that she got and worked really hard to achieve. It was really cool seeing how positively people reacted to the fact that she was running a time like that in her late 40s. And I think that really cemented the Trials standard as like the pinnacle of running. But it wasn’t until very recently that I thought, especially now with the much faster standard, that it was something that I could attain.

What convinced you to keep running seriously or competitively after you graduated from [college]?

Yeah, I think I wasn’t necessarily planning on running competitively [after college]. I knew I wanted to do a marathon at some point. I don’t know if I had really thought it through that much.

Essentially, I was a junior when COVID hit, and I had just qualified for my first NCAA Track Championships. I was the last one in in the 5k, I was like the 20th person to qualify, and then they canceled it, and that was it. That was the end of college, essentially. Everything was remote after that, and I ended up graduating early, just because I wasn’t really enjoying the experience of going to school during COVID.

So I think that a little bit lit a fire in my stomach, just to have been so close to actually getting a lot faster, and then all of it just disappearing. And then on top of that, when I moved to New York, I moved before any of my other friends did in the winter of 2021, which was really peak COVID. And it’s very hard to make friends when you can’t go out and meet people. But one of the best ways to make friends that was in a way that we were all like this is safe and good, is to run. So I started making friends through running, because you can just run outside. It’s super fine, it’s super safe. And I think that just immediately got me back into the running circle, and I pretty rapidly joined a team in New York after that.

You’ve been with the Dashing Whippets since early in your post-grad running journey. How did you find them, what convinced you to join them, and what have they meant in your running journey post-grad?

Yeah, I joined them early on. A woman who was a captain of my college team, Khia Kurtenbach, at that time was on the Whippets, and she was one of the few people I knew in New York. So I just started running with her and her friends, who were almost all on the Whippets too, and I think that really is what got me into the team. And since then, I think it’s been really cool because I’ve made a lot of my really close friends through the team, and I also have enjoyed feeling like I have grown while being on the team.

The team has grown also while I’ve been on it, both in terms of the depth, the competitiveness and just like in size, in organization, and that’s really cool to see for an established team. So it means a lot to me. I think they also provide the flexibility that I desire in training compared to some of the other teams in New York, which I really appreciate.

New York City is known as people balancing running competitively with demanding lives outside of that, full-time jobs, stuff like that. You experienced somewhat of a similar situation at UChicago….

Curious if you can talk about how that experience prepared you for this post-grad running experience?

Yeah, I think it really prepared me quite well. And I also went to a pretty demanding high school, and I think that also prepared me. It’s one of those things where, I think at UChicago, I found a really good groove…. I’m not gonna get too caught up in how I compare to other people. I’m just gonna focus on the fact that everyone is out here doing really impressive things, whether running or scholastically, and I’m just a part of it. And I’m nothing special. I’m just doing what they’re doing, and it’s super chill and easy. I think that mentality really helped me make sure I didn’t get too stressed or have any imposter syndrome in college.

And I think as an adult, that has applied directly. I think I’ve really thrived in running, having a ton of very good running partners, such that the goals I have and the paces I’m running don’t feel crazy. They feel reasonable, because there are a bunch of other women who are doing very similar things.

And I have a job, and the job is filled with very smart people, but everyone else is doing very cool things outside of work. I have co-workers who are very involved in the soccer scene in New York, rec soccer, they play on three or four soccer teams and they care a ton about it. Or they’re very competitive at chess. There’s just such an environment of people who are achieving so many things in different parts of their lives that I feel like I can do what I’m doing and not feel stressed about it. This is just a normal thing. This is fine. And I think that mentality has really helped a ton.

You talked about it earlier, when you were a sophomore in college, the OTQ didn’t seem attainable. Once you graduated and started running post-grad, was that always the long-term goal, or did it still take some time for that to become a realistic goal in your mind?

Yeah, I don’t know if it seemed like a goal that would be attainable until about a year ago. It was one of those things where I was running in the amateur competitive tier of the New York scene for a really long time. And I was running a lot of like 2:53s, 2:58s, 3:01s [in the marathon].... At least for me [the OTQ] didn’t feel like an attainable thing.

Then about a year ago, it kind of felt like I just woke up one day and I did a workout, and then I finished that workout, and I was like, ‘I can do it.’ I went to work that day, and I was like, ‘I just had the best workout of my life, and I think I’m in incredible shape.’ And I think ever since then, it’s kind of been there as a goal just looming over me.

The Runner’s World article talked about it as well, you were kind of in that 2:55-3:00 range for a bit, and then made a big jump in Boston last year, and then New York, and then eventually qualified [for the Trials] this year.

In hindsight, do you attribute it to anything in particular, or is it just how running goes, where the training kind of accumulates, and sometimes that drop can just happen?

That’s a good question. It’s funny, I think at this point last year, when I just started getting faster and faster and faster, I had this running joke that it was karmic, like bad things are done to you, therefore good things have to be done in order for it to balance out. And I think it was partially like I was just having a bad winter and I then got better at running. So in my head, I was like, ‘This is just like the universe balancing itself out,’ which is funny, because I’m not normally like that as a person. But I think in reality, there is some kernel of truth to it.

I think I spent a lot of my young 20s being a young 20-something in New York and having a very active social life, and just not prioritizing running in many ways, even though I was still training, and I was still often hitting 60 miles a week, close to 70 miles a week. But I think at some point last year, I just without even thinking about it was running more, and was caring about it more, and all the accumulated miles did end up making a difference. And then all of a sudden, it just came together at once, really without me being able to predict it.

You ran the pro field at the New York City Marathon last year. What did that experience mean to you and what did it feel like being able to do that?

Yeah, that was an incredible experience. I think it will go down as one of the best moments of my life.

I was very nervous about accepting it. It was one of those things where I felt like I had to take it this year, just because in my head, I was like, ‘Well, there are a lot of other women in New York who are faster than me, and they’re just all going for the OTQ this year. So I should accept the pro field this year, because everyone else is going to want to run New York another year.’

But yeah, I remember being incredibly nervous. And I was incredibly nervous because I knew that all of my friends and all my family was coming out to watch. All my friends who weren’t runners were watching. All my roommates were gonna watch…. I live in Park Slope, and just running down Fourth Ave in Brooklyn, and seeing all of my roommates, and then seeing the Whippets Brooklyn cheer squad, I saw my parents from afar, I saw some old friends who I don’t even talk to anymore, I saw a ton of co-workers. And just being there and just seeing this whole community that I’ve made in New York coming out and cheering, yeah it was incredible.

And then I ended up running a time that was well outside what I thought I could run. And yeah, it was just an incredible experience. I will never forget it.

What motivated you to sign up for the Napa Valley Marathon and use that as your next step after New York, in terms of going for the OTQ?

Yeah, I had a close friend of mine who ran the Marine Corps Marathon a week before [the New York City Marathon], and she just missed getting a sub-three hour marathon, and she really wanted to run another marathon soon. And I had just run way faster than I thought I could, and I wanted to run another marathon soon. But I wasn’t ready to do—I feel like a lot of people will just roll into another marathon like five weeks later, and I knew that was not going to be an option for me. But Napa was essentially the soonest marathon that you could have a full training block for. It is a fast course. It’s rolling hills, but it’s a net downhill. So I knew that that would be great. And then I was also doing it with two of my close college friends, and it was kind of a girls trip. And I was like, ‘Why not do a girls trip to Napa? This is going to be a great time.’

So that was a cool experience. And also I was very stressed going into New York, and I did want to have a bit more of a chill, relaxed experience away from all the spectators. Just somewhere I could do it in a way that was a low-pressure way, such that it didn’t take over my life with this desire to get the standard.

You have two years till the Trials—what are the focuses or goals over the next two years, before those Trials come in early 2028, when it comes to running?

I feel like they’re all non-running related. I’m doing a lot of different relay type races, like Hood to Coast, I’m doing Southbound 400…. I want to go backpacking a lot more. I think one of the things I really managed to do last year was build in a lot of outdoor time. I went bike packing in Canada, I did some of the Colorado trail, I did some Appalachian trail. I really enjoyed that, so I want to make that a priority this year. I want to focus on my community. I live in a communal house in Brooklyn that I really love, and I want to focus on my community in New York.

And then I also want to fit in running somehow. But I think this next year, the whole goal is running in a fun way and focusing on other athletic pursuits outside of it. And then yeah, next year we’ll see. We’ll get back down to business. I’ll just see what shape I am in as the middle to end of this year is approaching, and then we’ll start calibrating the goals. But I’d like to get close to 2:30, like why not.

You’ve done some OSR, unsanctioned races…. What motivated you to do those, and also how do you try to strike that balance between those types of races with the more traditional road races, OTQ and that side of the sport?

Yeah, so I decided to do an OSR race somewhat on a whim. It was one of those things where I didn’t have any tune-up races going into Boston, so I figured that I should do some sort of tune-up race. And it’s kind of hard to find tune-up races that weren’t already sold out for Boston….

But yeah, that was a ton of fun. It was a great experience. I just really enjoyed it. And I think I like the thought process that running should be fun and it should be silly, and you should sometimes do stupid things like go for a run at 2am in the city, and then go to the diner after. I definitely am a big believer that that should be a huge part of the culture, so I was very happy to participate in it. And maybe I’ll do another one of those races in the coming year.

But yeah, how do I fit it all together? I don’t know. I think in general, I don’t really prioritize going for times as much. Like the OTQ was a big time to do, but I’m incredibly happy with all my PRs at this point. And so it gives you so much more space to choose races that will make you feel happy, that are interesting, that people can watch, that fulfill you, if you’re not so worried about chasing PRs. Like I could do New York last year in part because I was super happy with my 2:44 [in Boston] and I didn’t think I was going to get the [OTQ] standard that time of the year. So I was like, ‘Why not do the hometown race where everyone I love can be there?’ And I think that has really allowed me to fit in these more fun experiences.

You mentioned on the PR front, maybe getting close to 2:30…. Curious how you think about long-term goals when it comes to your running, past the 2028 Trials?

I feel like I struggle to think of what a long-term goal is, because I think there’s a level of I don’t really know how I went from the shape I was in to the shape I’m in now. I still don’t quite understand how I made that jump. And I think there are things I want to try. I do want to try really upping my mileage a bit. I know I do thrive off of higher mileage. But right now, with my current lifestyle, I kind of struggle to get above an average of 70 [miles per week]. I’ll hit 80 occasionally, but I often have weeks where I hit 50. And I think what I plan on doing is, once I’ve had my fun, once I’ve done my traveling, my backpacking, to focus a bit on upping my mileage and just see where my fitness falls, and from that point make actual goals.

If it’s one of those things where it turns out I run 90 miles a week and I don’t get much faster, I’ll probably start focusing on other things. I really want to get into trail racing at some point. But if I up my mileage and I drop another five minutes, I’m going to have goals, and it is going to be something like running a 2:30. But it’s one of those things where I just don’t know if I can make the next jump, and it’s exciting to see whether or not that’ll be possible.

What makes the New York City running community so special to you, or what’s your favorite part of the New York City running community?

I would say the New York City running community feels really special because it’s big, and everyone’s doing their own thing outside of it. I think I find that to be super interesting. It’s funny, because when you’re in high school or in college and you’re running on one of those teams, you’re surrounded by people who, realistically, they live all around you, they’re in the same classes as you, you know where they’re from, you know what they’re up to.

And it feels like in the New York City community, it’s just such a wide range of people and experiences they come from, and yet we’re all doing the same thing, and going for a run together. And I find that to be amazing.

What lessons have you learned from running that have helped in other areas of your life?

I would say definitely the big thing that running has taught me is that the best way to go about doing painful things or hard things or things that you might have to work for, is to just make it feel as normal and as chill as possible. I think how I get through races that are painful is at some point I just don’t conceive of it really as pain. This is just how you’re supposed to feel, you’re running a marathon. I don’t want to be like, ‘I’m in pain, I got to push through.’ You got to convince your mind that this is fine, and that you are fine, that everything will be okay. And I think that’s actually a really important skill.

Like, you’re working a hard job, if you’re just letting it get to you, how stressful and how difficult and how much work you have to put into it, it’s going to be difficult and stressful, and you’re going to put a lot of work into it. But if you can actually convince yourself that it is okay and that everyone else is doing this and it’s not so bad, this is normal, I think that’s a much better way to go about life that really allows you to do hard things without putting in too much effort. So that’s a huge thing that I think running has taught me.

And the other thing is, someone’s pointed out that when you go for a run with each other, you don’t make eye contact with them, right? You’re going for a run, and you’re going side by side, and that really lets you get into much deeper and interesting conversations, because it’s eye contact that really throws us off. It makes us uncomfortable, and so we can’t open up emotionally. And I think running has really allowed me to open up emotionally to people. It’s structured time, or I guess unstructured time, where you can just talk with your friends about literally anything. And it’s early in the morning, you see them routinely, and you just develop such deep friendships. And I think learning that skill through running has allowed me to do it with friends that aren’t runners, and it’s just really made my social life feel very deep and fruitful.

Do you have a most underrated or favorite running spot that isn’t one of the typical ones in New York?

Oh yeah, around Green-Wood Cemetery. You can’t go in—although going for a walk in Green-Wood Cemetery is a phenomenal vibe. I definitely use that for dates. But going around the outside is just uninterrupted street running. You have views of the cemetery, which is beautiful. You have views of the Statue of Liberty when you’re running down the north side of it, if you’re going east. At some point you’re passing the Baked In Brooklyn factory, and it smells like pita chips in the air. It’s just a phenomenal vibe.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

No, I mean I think the main thing that I always want to bring up is that my mother is obviously a huge inspiration, but I feel like that at this point is becoming well-trodden territory.

I think it’s funny, I would say a good part of my life is not about running. I feel like we’ve covered almost all the running parts.

Last year, Vernon Balanza started doing a run club tour of New York City.

“I did 35 run clubs without really trying,” he says. “That’s how many there are.”

Through the experience, he learned just how much the NYC running scene has changed since he first got involved a decade ago, from the increased focus on community to the magnitude and specificity of the clubs in the city. His involvement isn’t limited to New York, however.

Vernon’s also made an effort to join run clubs while traveling, whether it be additional chapters of local clubs or new ones that help acclimate himself to another city. It all connects back to the social aspect that hooked him to the sport in the first place, though Vernon’s also a big advocate of following what makes running enjoyable for you and that it can be ‘a community sport as much as you want to make it out to be.’

Over the years the New York City native has found other purposes behind his running as well. Last spring he raised money to run the London Marathon in memory of his father, and this fall will be returning to race the New York City Marathon for the first time since 2022, which Vernon says will mean ‘something special’ on his 10-year anniversary of running the race for the first time.

We spoke with Vernon to discuss what he learned from his run club tour, how running can be both a solitary and community sport, his costumes while spectating the New York City Marathon the last two years and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, if you want to give an intro of where you’re from originally and then how you got into running?

So I’m originally from Manhattan, I grew up in East Village, went to college in Philadelphia, came back and eventually settled in Forest Hills, Queens. And I didn’t really get into running until my 30s. I spent my 20s pretty much focused on visiting every single Major League Baseball park, completed that in 2010.

How I got into running—I was in between jobs, I applied to go to business school, I was visiting my friends in Boston, and they ran the Boston Marathon 5k. It’s a twofold event, how I got into running. Seeing my friends run [the Boston Marathon 5k], this was back in 2011…. And then secondly, how I got the marathon into my brain, I was randomly in Cleveland, just visiting, didn’t realize it was Cleveland Marathon weekend. And I got to go into the Cleveland Browns stadium to talk to a few marathoners who just finished, and that kind of planted the seed in my head—this was 2011 as well.

I knew I wanted to run, and then at some point at that time, I had the marathon on my bucket list of things to do. And then I went to business school, didn’t really focus on [running] because I was studying, networking, eventually transitioned my career from e-commerce to finance. And then once I finished business school around 2014, decided to give running a shot. I didn’t know what I was doing. Before Fleet Feet it was JackRabbit, so I went to the JackRabbit Union Square store, and then found out they had a club, and just kind of was in over my head. It was my first time running, and just kind of died on my first run.

But what brought me into running was the community aspect. So I got to know a few people there, and then found out about the other JackRabbit stores. It kind of brought the thing that I missed from business school—it was like meeting new friends and networking, except we were just doing something physical, running. And then eventually I was at a birthday party, found out about another club, Run & Chug, this is back in 2015. And then from there, I started finding out about different clubs, just talking to people.

You had the New York City Marathon on your bucket list, but then what hooked you to running where you kept doing races after that?

Yeah, I’ve done 13 marathons. And some of the groups that I was doing back in the past had different chapters around the U.S. I was a member of November Project for a number of years. One of my other first clubs, TMIRCE, The Most Informal Running Club, Ever, they started in Boston, then spread out to NYC and then Austin. So it was one of those things where I’m traveling, I find a running group…. I kind of just like that [networking] aspect, it’s something I was really good at when I was in business school at Fordham.

You’ve done a lot of races across the U.S. and over the world over the years. Are there any that stand out as being your favorite, or just any races in general that stand out in your memory?

I’m actually doing London this year, I did London last year.

I just want to give a little bit of background information. So 2023, I got injured. I did two marathons, but then I didn’t give myself time to recover…. I had shin splints and it almost caused a stress fracture, so I couldn’t run for a while. At that time, I gave myself a break, it was like my scheduled year off from marathons. I thought I was gonna pick it up in 2024, but then I was traveling, and I also wanted to focus on other things.

And what got me back into running—so when my dad passed away, I knew I wanted to honor him in a way. Another thing that was on my bucket list was to fundraise for a race, and I was able to get a charity spot to do London last year. So my dad was in hospice care before he passed away, and there are a lot of hospice charities—I was able to kind of tie it together…. I wanted to mean it from the heart more than anything else. So that kind of got me back into running.

One of the things you’ve been doing over the last six, eight months was the run club tour across New York City…. Through that, what did you learn about the running scene in New York City?

I did 35 run clubs without really trying. That’s how many there are….

I would say a lot more people are chasing the Majors now. So it’s kind of like the bucket list, where with this running boom, it’s kind of just a stature symbol. I would say another thing is that some people run for the community aspect, like, ‘Oh, I’m new to town, everyone’s getting into running, so let’s go run’.... That’s what I’ve learned, is that a lot more people are really caring more about the community aspect….

The other thing I’ve noticed is that there’s also a run club for different interests. There’s one I know of called FIRE Runners, basically people who want to retire early, they pretty much max out their retirement. Tour de Coffee tries to hit different coffee shops. I know other run clubs, they also have book clubs. There’s Foodie Run Club where you focus on trying to hit different restaurants every other week, started by Andy Liu, I know he’s primarily in Old Man Run Club. And then there’s another one where it’s a pizza run, where you do a few miles and then sample pizza from one of the different pizzerias in New York City. They also put on a Pizza 5k, which sells out pretty fast.

Another thing that I saw on your Instagram was your costumes at the last couple of New York City Marathons while spectating. Curious if you can talk through the origins of those, why you like to do that, etc.?

So 2024 was obvious. I’m a Mets fan, Grimace. 2025 I’m like, ‘All right, Grimace is a one and done. Let’s go for something really funny.’ My original plan was to do a Labubu, then I realized how expensive it is. I went for the next best thing, and Squidward was the one that popped into my head. So I went to Spirit Halloween in Astoria, and I was like, ‘All right, let’s find a Squidward’....

I was cheering with Run for Chinatown, and Fifth Avenue is rough…. That’s right before you start going uphill, and knowing how tough it is, getting a laugh can just help you prepare for that inevitable burn before Engineer’s Gate. So it’s kind of like, be memorable, get a few laughs, cheer people up.

Are you running the [NYC Marathon] this year?

I am, because it’s gonna be my 10th Anniversary of when I first did it, and it’s also the 50th [anniversary of the five-borough course]. So when I was doing 9+1, I knew that was coming up. I don’t do it every year, but when I do I want to specifically do it on an anniversary…. This one means something special.

Are there any major lessons that you’ve learned from running that stand out?

It’s really fun to explore when you travel through other run clubs. Last year I did a run club in Portland, Oregon. Literally the first thing I did once I got into Portland was run straight to the brewery [for RunAway Club]. I’m in a new city, I don’t know where the heck I’m going, decided to go for a run and just follow my phone to the starting point, not knowing anything about Portland, Oregon.

So it’s a great way to explore cities, doing long runs. People definitely are receptive for visitors to come. A lot of it’s just simply going on Reddit, going on Google, just look up run clubs, you’ll find it in five seconds. It’s a great way to explore. If you’re kind of not a social person, it’s okay to just not do it and just run on your own….

When people give me advice, they speak from experience. Do listen to them. And don’t be pressured into running in a club. If you want to run on your own, that’s perfectly fine…. It’s a solitary sport, it can also be a community sport as much as you want to make it out to be. So definitely do what you’re comfortable with. If you want to do speed work, that’s perfectly fine. If you’re happy with your pace, that’s perfectly fine. So don’t be pressed to be like, ‘Oh, because everyone else is doing the Majors’—if you’re not one to like traveling, why keep up with the Joneses, especially when it’s expensive for something you don’t want to keep up with?

The other lessons learned—run clubs can come and go. I would say it’s a lot of work organizing a run club. So even though people are starting them left and right, you have to realize that it’s going to kind of be like a second job…. It’s easy to just join a run club, but if you want to run one, that’s a lot more work than you realize.

As someone who’s visited and tried out a bunch of different run clubs across the country in different cities, what makes the New York City running community different or special in your eyes?

What makes [the New York City running community] special is that it’s huge, and a lot of it’s community-focused. I would say Harlem Run’s one of the best examples, of we care about the community, we want to celebrate it…. It’s such a big community, but people tend to know each other.

Do you have a most underrated or favorite running route in New York City?

Forest Park. I haven’t done it much this year because the weather’s been cold, so I’ve done most of my runs in Flushing Meadows Park.

Forest Park is kind of like your local replacement of Central Park…. It kind of feels like you’re outside of the city, because it can feel a little desolate, but people do run and bike that trail a lot. When I did a run with the Asian Trail Mix, we actually went off the main path, and did our own trail run inside there. You can definitely get some trail runs, and there are some very steep hills there. So I’d say Forest Park is definitely very underrated. It’s a beautiful path.

Any topics that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to touch on, or just any closing thoughts?

So influencers—I try not to follow any influencers unless I know them in person, just because you might get FOMO, you might make decisions you may not want to do. A lot of folks, they chase Majors. I would say if you’re into it, sure, but just don’t compare yourself against influencers, because they’re kind of telling a story….

I would say another thing is Open Runs are another great way of meeting more people in the community. It was modeled after parkrun in the U.K. And it’s simple—you just have an easy 5k throughout various different parks based on the schedule. It’s very open. You can walk it, you can run it. And I think for anyone, if they’re very intimidated by going to a running group, Open Run is a great introduction if you’re afraid, because they celebrate every finisher. You won’t be intimidated at all because it’s a lot of people running for the first time.

And of course I’ve told this to many people, if they’re on social media, one of the most important social media accounts to follow as a runner is Squat University. It’s a PT, he’s more focused on weightlifting, but you kind of learn about different injuries, different things that he does. Inevitably when you go to PT, their conversations will make a lot more sense. It’s a great resource for anyone, not just who runs, who lifts. I can literally spend two hours going through his one-minute clips, just kind of learning about different aspects of the body. And that’s something you learn real fast, because injuries happen, and it sucks, but at least you’re kind of aware of what your PT is trying to tell you when you go through this.

Joe DiNoto has organized a lot of races through Orchard Street Runners over the years, from the inaugural Midnight Half in 2012 to the Prototype Race last fall and everything that’s come between. But he says last Saturday’s OSR30 might top them all.

“As far as the race itself, and that kind of immeasurable energy that results from it, this was probably the biggest race we’ve ever done,” DiNoto said. “It’s just hard to put into words.”

In the end, 150 athletes (along with their required bike escorts) completed the roughly 30-mile trek around the perimeter of Manhattan, mapping their own route between Orchard Street on the Lower East Side to three checkpoints on Randall’s Island, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the South Ferry Terminal and back to where they started. Even more notable, though, were the lines of spectators braving the 30-degree weather that turned Orchard Street—the only road closed as part of the race—into a day-long block party.

“It’s like throwing all your energy leading into this event into a mixing bowl, in different forms, like different ingredients—getting the street shut down, organizing volunteers, each element. And you have this time ahead of it to put this energy in,” DiNoto added. “And you kind of do it blindly, not knowing what this cake is going to taste like at the end. You’re just doing everything you can with the time you have.

“And then it gets to a point where you have to let go of it, step back and just let it happen. And after 15 years, I kind of know what to do to feel comfortable enough to trust that it’s going to be a good event. But then a lot of times, with the contributions from so many people, it exceeds expectations in a way you can’t even imagine. And this race did that in a big way.”

Check out the preview of the 2026 OSR30 here.

‘At the paces he was running, it’s an art form’

The battle at the front of the race set the tone for the day.

Joe DeAngelo—a master’s student at the Manhattan School of Music who placed second in November’s OSR Prototype Race—said last week that his main goal entering his first OSR30 was to mix it up with the front pack, though he also noted that the fast editions of this race are certainly memorable and “to some extent, you do want to put on a good performance.”

He did just that Saturday, leading virtually from start to finish to take the win in 2:49:34, a 5:54 pace across 28.75 miles. Chase Junell, returning for his second OSR30 after his 2:47 victory in 2024, took second place this time around in 2:56:22.

DiNoto admits that heading into the race he expected Junell’s experience to give him the edge between him and DeAngelo. But the latter showed no fear from the very beginning, trailing right behind DiNoto’s lead bike across Delancey Street just after the start, building a gap on the rest of the men’s leaders less than a mile in and navigating his own unique route and traffic like a seasoned veteran.

“I like watching Joe do his thing, because you can tell he’s somebody that’s all in,” DiNoto said. “He’s all in with his fitness, he’s all in with his music. There are certain types of people that embody that kind of characteristic. And when it translates to running, he’s almost in a different dimension, and he’s kind of like experiencing his own little world as he’s moving through it, as he’s running, because he’s so focused and so detached from everything, yet at the same time so engaged….

“It’s really cool to watch him move through traffic, because I mean at the paces he was running, it’s an art form.”

That skill became especially important for DeAngelo between the Henry Hudson Bridge and the South Ferry Terminal. While most participants opted to take the flatter and calmer route on the West Side Highway, DeAngelo took a slightly more direct path down Central Park West and then Broadway, traversing through Columbus Circle, Times Square, Herald Square and more.

He says he wasn’t forced to stop at all along his route, crossing Columbus Circle just before they blocked off the area for the “No Kings” protest later that afternoon. And that outside of one “slightly close call with a bus,” he didn’t face any major traffic issues. Besides, as four-time OSR30 winner Travis Hawkins also described before the race, staying on edge can help in the latter stages of an ultra-marathon.

“Running through traffic is exciting,” DeAngelo said. “It’s exhilarating, man. It gets you going, and it made it fun. So it was at least entertaining. I mean, I run on the West Side Highway all the time. It’s flat, you can lock in and run really fast, but when you get late in the race, it’s hard to keep up that energy.”

Because Junell chose to run down the west side—he said he took a more inward route during his 2024 win, but this year believed the ease of no stop lights or hills was worth the slightly extra distance—neither competitor knew exactly where they stood compared to one another down the stretch. In fact, DeAngelo didn’t realize he was still in the lead until he turned back onto Orchard Street and saw the volunteers setting up the finish-line tape. And from there, the crowd carried him to the end.

“Hearing the crowd scream like a stadium when Joe was coming up Orchard—the size of it kind of creating these unexpected moments, just the volume of energy, the volume of people, shoulder to shoulder, the whole block,” DiNoto said. “I mean, it was crazy.”

Lars Hultgren followed in third place, with Chris Shirazi and Matthew Roberts placing fourth and fifth, respectively.

‘This really embodied that team spirit’

The women’s side played out in somewhat similar fashion to the men, with Jamie Morrissey taking the race out hard in her first OSR30 en route to a 3:13:43 victory, a 6:37 pace across 29.23 miles.

A former All-American at the University of Michigan and professional middle-distance runner post-graduation, Morrissey has since retired from professional running and now works as a teacher and track coach in Brooklyn. She first found OSR after the 2020 OSR1 blew up on social media, eventually winning the unsanctioned mile race through Times Square in 2024 before “[getting] the marathon bug” and running the last two New York City Marathons. After the 2025 marathon, R.A.D reached out to Morrissey about sponsoring her and a team for the OSR30, and she jumped on the opportunity.

“My best friend [Kelly] was my bike pacer. My favorite photographer and friend, Aisha McAdams, was shooting us. My training partner Insa Mannstadt was pacing me. And it just was a really fun opportunity to hit all of the streets of New York with some of my best friends,” Morrissey said. “I’ve always been really in love with the team aspect of cross country racing and even track. I know running can be a very individual sport, but in high school and college, that was always my favorite part, was to chase a goal together with somebody. And this really embodied that team spirit.”

Similar to DeAngelo, Morrissey took Broadway between checkpoints two and three. She says she thought her route would cut off more distance than it did, and potentially would’ve stayed along the water had she done more “critical mapping” ahead of time. But overall, she has no regrets.

“When I think OSR, I think dodging traffic, avoiding people, as much chaos as possible,” Morrissey said. “So part of my decision was that, just being like, ‘I know that this additional element actually adds fuel to my fire’.... Going through Times Square, I’ll never forget that memory with all my friends.”

Tianna Biscone took runner-up for the second year in a row in 3:15:55, staying relatively patient over the front half of the race before unleashing an impressive negative split over the final 15 miles. She ran out of real estate to truly compete for the win, but credits her initial patience with allowing her to pull away from the rest of the women’s pack behind Morrissey. Anya Nayak followed closely behind in third, with Mulan Xia and Lindsey Nelson rounding out the top five.

The group represents yet another level up of the OSR30 women’s field, a continuing trend over the last several years and one DiNoto believes will build upon itself into the future as well. He says someone of Morrissey’s background running the race reminds him of when Hawkins entered the field on the men’s side for the first time, and that “it starts with one and results in many.”

Morrissey points to the many female Olympic Trials qualifiers in the New York City running community who’ve participated in OSR races over the years as inspiration for her to also get involved. And that at this point, the OSR30 is beginning to separate itself among races in the city.

“I would say if anybody lives in New York, the things that you need to race are the New York City Marathon, OSR30,” Morrissey said. “They honestly are probably tied at this point.”

From start to finish

While some stressed about which path would provide the best combination of directness, flatness and ease of mind, Liam Underwood-Price planned the route of their first ultra-marathon with the goal of passing specific landmarks throughout the city. From their first apartment on Fort Washington Avenue to the nursing school they attended and the entire West Side greenway that kept them “sane” while living in a concrete jungle, Underwood-Price said they appreciate the way a race like the OSR30 gives you a chance to “stop at little places that are significant to you.”

Underwood-Price finished the race in 4:25:45, taking the win in the non-binary division, though they’ve struggled with having a spotlight and “feeling that it’s a win” in races in which they’re the only non-binary competitor.

“I’m a different kind of athlete in how I want to run, and for me it’s not all about being fast,” Underwood-Price said. “It’s about being present. It’s about being grateful for being able to run and the spaces that we have to run, and everything that the Earth gives us. Even living in a huge city that’s all concrete, there’s always little things. There’s always little signs of resilience, and it’s really a privilege to be part of that.”

Underwood-Price adds that they’re very thankful a group like OSR offers a non-binary category—saying “this is going to sound so corny, but it’s a win for non-binary and trans people when there is a non-binary division in a race”—and that they hope more queer and gender non-conforming runners continue showing up to OSR races.

“Having the non-binary category is something that Corey [Weiss] and I decided four years ago now to just start implementing, knowing that we may be building it and not using it for certain events, and hosting one or two athletes for other events,” DiNoto said. “The Prototype Race we saw double-digit non-binary registrants. When it’s ready to happen, I want us to be ready to accommodate it…. Inclusion is important for OSR. I don’t want there to be anything stopping somebody from testing themselves on the stage that we set.”

Finishing off the day were two more athletes running their first ultra-marathon together—Reph and his 76-year-old dad, Jose Alfaro. Jose said the race itself was a bit more grueling than he expected going in, especially compared to previous marathons he’d run, and that the first time doing any new distance is always a valuable learning experience to improve upon in the future.

But the best part for both he and Reph was the support they received from the community throughout the race, including those that stayed on Orchard Street to welcome them in to the finish.

“When we pulled up, it felt like we were the first ones done,” Reph said. “That’s a feat in itself, to make the last people feel like they were the first people, and to celebrate everybody equally. That just speaks to the integrity of the race and how real Joe and OSR is.”

DiNoto says watching Reph and Jose run together hit close to home, having lost his father in 2024—especially considering part of the original inspiration for OSR’s lineup of nighttime races were DiNoto’s experiences as a kid joining his father’s nighttime bread delivery route, and trying to replicate that experience for anyone in the city willing to try it out.

“Their relationship, their dynamic and everything, them coming in dead last and being celebrated by people that stayed till the very end to support them, it bookended everything with really special moments and really amazing performances,” DiNoto said. “Whether they were based on how fast somebody ran it or just the fact that somebody ran it.”

Scratching the surface

The OSR30 has certainly grown a lot from its initial 14-person field in 2014, with Saturday’s 150 finishers setting a new record for the event. But in many ways, DiNoto doesn’t think “we’ve really even touched what this event could be.”

He says this was the first year the surrounding Lower East Side community got involved, working with the 7th Precinct to shut down Orchard Street near the start and finish as well as both Cafe Katja and Armada to provide food to athletes and spectators throughout the day. And already, some of the neighboring businesses that weren’t directly involved this year have expressed interest in doing so next March.

“Before this year, it was done in the neighborhood, but it was small enough and lowkey enough that you didn’t have to shut down a street,” DiNoto said. “Nobody would really notice it.”

Those community partnerships, on top of the volunteers, photographers and videographers that help make the OSR30 what it is, only add to what DiNoto calls a feeling of collective ownership on the day. It’s a feeling that’s held true throughout the race’s 12-year history, despite its increase in size and visibility. And it’s one DiNoto hopes the race will maintain as it continues to inevitably grow and serve a booming running population looking for alternative racing options.

“It’s a race, but it’s just like a whole experience,” Underwood-Price said. “I think the whole reason that we do these kinds of races is for joy.

“And to piss off drivers who are being jackasses. I mean, that’s nice too.”

-By Evan Kolin